Vscode: Improve Windows support in integrated terminal

[Tyriar]

Currently pty.js drives communication to and from the terminal's shell process but there are some issues with the way it's setup:

• To get it building with the newer node.js and to integrate with our Windows code signing I was forced to fork it to Tyriar/pty.js.
• The fork is a fork (Tyriar/pty.js) of a fork (platformio/pty.js) of a fork (jeremyramin/pty.js) of the original (chjj/pty.js) 😕 and it probably doesn't have to be.
• The original is not really maintained anymore.
• The current commit being used is on a branch called prebuilt but the prebuilt assets were removed to get signing working on Tyriar/pty.js. The prebuilt branch was copied over the master branch https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/tree/master
• All versions of pty.js depends on a fork (peters/winpty) of a very old version of rprichard/winpty which includes quite a few changes, including changes to the API. I believe this old version of winpty is the root cause for several windows-specific terminal issues.
• We should publish to Tyriar/pty.js to npm, particularly since it now has more consumers than just vscode https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/issues/9

[supnate]

Hi @Tyriar , thanks for your work on this! Just FYI I also tried ptyw.js but with no luck. Finally I had to fallback to use cmd.exe to get result of a command. Looking forward to a stable pty.js! 👏

[the-ress]

The winpty version used in Tyriar/pty.js is a little newer than peters/winpty.

It's from jeremyramin/winpty@a988fe99934c59e5f518f6f90a60f52c72ee3f31

[Tyriar]

@the-ress thanks for pointing that out, I wasn't aware :smiley:

[Tyriar]

I've enabled issues on Tyriar/pty.js so I can better organize the issues.

[Tyriar]

I replaced the master branch with the prebuilt branch and set the default back to master. It's fine to point at master now.

[Tyriar]

Here's the plan:

• [x] Replace the master branch with the prebuilt branch and set master back to the default.
• [x] Evaluate if any changes are needed from peters/winpty
• [x] Uplevel winpty 0.2.x -> 0.3.1 https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/pull/8 https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/pull/15378
• [x] Uplevel winpty 0.3.1 -> 0.4.0 0.4.1 https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/issues/10
• [x] Test in cmd, powershell, git bash and WSL bash
• [x] Update README with relevant information https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/issues/11
• [x] Rename the repo and module and publish to npm. https://github.com/Tyriar/pty.js/issues/9

[Tyriar]

0.3.1 itself is unstable due to https://github.com/rprichard/winpty/issues/80

[be5invis]

Mr @Tyriar You should ask WDG to include an OFFICIAL PTY API into Creaters’ update.
cf. Microsoft/BashOnWindows#1117

[Tyriar]

@be5invis while that would be nice, it won't fix the problem from my end (for a long time) as we will need to support legacy Windows. 👍'd though.

[Tyriar]

An update on this: I've currently put the upgrade on hold as my initial testing of winpty 0.4.1 shows some breakages such as git bash moving the cursor in the wrong direction after backspace and many glitches in Bash for Windows. This is still a stretch goal for this iteration so I'm going to focus on finishing up the other stuff I have assigned this iteration before looking further into this.

I have however published the lib with all the fixes from before (what we ship in stable) as [email protected] npm so other consumers are safe to use that npm package if they were previously pointing to c75c2dc on Tyriar/pty.js. The only change was in the package.json metadata.

[Tyriar]

I filed https://github.com/rprichard/winpty/issues/96 on the winpty repo outlining the major issues I see

[Tyriar]

One of the issues was node-pty's fault which has been fixed, the one last issue I believe has already been fixed (https://github.com/rprichard/winpty/commit/40d5b72c43165875724825fab5b5e5303fa5c3c3) and is just waiting for the new winpty version! :tada:

[Tyriar]

I just pushed to master to use [email protected] which includes the winpty fix for applications within WSL. If all goes well I'll release the new version of node-pty.