Tilix: new terminal doesn't inherit directory from active

[patriziobruno]

Hi,
I'm a former gnomer-terminal user and (apart from the always useful tabs, that would be nice to navigate through subterminals inside tiles) I miss an important feature that on Tilix seems not to be working: when I create a new terminal/window I'd like for the new terminal to be inheriting the CWD from the former active terminal, ie. I press Ctrl+Alt+D while in a terminal where $CWD is /tmp, I want the new terminal/shell to have the same working directory /tmp
I thought the feature was available (although that setting label is a bit confusing as it seems to be available only for new windows)

But enabling or disabling this setting changes nothing in Tilix's behaviour about CWD for new terminals.

Thanks,
P.

[phw]

Most likely the VTE configuration issue, please see https://github.com/gnunn1/tilix/wiki/VTE-Configuration-Issue

[patriziobruno]

Hi @phw, thanks for the answer. I've already followed those instructions to properly set VTE when Tilix prompted me to, but without success. gnome-terminal uses the same VTE version as Tilix and it works as expected.

[gnunn1]

I'm pretty sure you still have an issue with vte configuration, what shell are you using, bash? If so what do you see when you run echo $PROMPT_COMMAND?

Here is my output, note the __vte_prompt_command, you should see the same in yours.

echo $PROMPT_COMMAND
_powerline_set_prompt __vte_prompt_command

[patriziobruno]

Hi @gnunn1,
You're right, PROMP_COMMAND was not set, because of this line at the beginning of /etc/profile.d/vte.sh
[ "${VTE_VERSION:-0}" -ge 3405 ] || return 0

It turns out that VTE_VERSION is not set. I can't investigate the issue any further, but the whole thing looks like a bug to me. One thing that bugs me is, why does Tilix need PROMPT_COMMAND, while gnome-terminal's directory inheritance works without it?

BTW Setting PROMPT_COMMAND properly makes directory inheritance work.

[gnunn1]

I guess the issue is why you don't have VTE_VERSION in your environment variables whereas you do in gnome-terminal, When I run the following in tilix on my system it is there:

env | grep VTE_VERSION
VTE_VERSION=5002

However tilix does use dbus activation which can impact the environment variables that are set, however this variable looks like it is set by VTE itself:

https://github.com/GNOME/vte/blob/bca23e844378e57294c96661b5051ff199736cdc/src/pty.cc#L236

[patriziobruno]

VTE_VERSION seems to be fine at times (I still don't know why it's not always set), but even so PROMPT_COMMAND was empty and I've found out why in ~/.bashrc

if [ $TILIX_ID ] || [ $VTE_VERSION ]; then
   PROMPT_COMMAND=`custom_prompt`
fi

commented out this code everything started working fine

[gnunn1]

Glad you got it worked out.

[patriziobruno]

It's still not clear why gnome-terminal doesn't need PROMPT_COMMAND though, while Tilix does, to retain CWD across new terminals.

[gnunn1]

gnome-terminal does need PROMPT_COMMAND in exactly the same way that tilix does since they both use the VTE widget and this widget is what is requiring PROMPT_COMMAND. Both tilix and gnome terminal require that /etc/profile.d/vte.sh be sourced and if you look at that file you can see that it is overriding the prompt command.

Not all distros source vte.sh correctly though and it's been a long standing pain point for terminal emulators based on VTE (gnome-terminal, tilix, terminator, etc). Tilix does try to detect this and warn you about it in a dialog that points you to different ways of resolving the issue.

It's less noticeable in gnome-terminal, because it only inherits CWD when creating new terminals as tabs or windows which carries less expectation of inheriting the CWD.

Hope this helps explain it.