Unscrollable Output

[ovidiuanca]

I started using Ghostty and like it, but an error keeps me switching from iTerm.

Description

When using the Ghostty terminal on macOS with the Heroku CLI, I encounter an issue while running queries in the Rails console.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open the Ghostty terminal on macOS.
2. Connect to the Heroku CLI and enter the Rails console.
3. Run the following command to retrieve all Country records from the database:

   Country.all

4. The terminal initially displays some output, then stops and shows the message:

   Preparing full inspection value
   

5. The screen then freezes for about 5 seconds. (Expected, as the output is a large dataset).
6. After the delay, the terminal displays the following warning message:

   WARNING: terminal is not fully functional
   Press RETURN to continue
   

7. Upon pressing ENTER, the output appears, but scrolling through the results is not possible.

Expected Behavior

• The query should execute without a warning.
• The results should be fully scrollable, as they are in iTerm2 after completion.

Actual Behavior

• A warning about the terminal not being fully functional appears.
• The results appear after pressing ENTER, but scrolling is disabled.

Important note

• Reproducing this issue with my steps might be annoying for most of you if you don't have Heroku CLI and a Rails app, but I assume this can be reproduced by connecting to a cloud SQL DB and trying to fetch a long list of records.
• When running the same directly on my machine (not in the cloud), the large output is displayed correctly, and the content is scrollable.

Additional Information

• macOS Version: Sequoia 15.3
• Ghostty Version: 1.1.2
• iTerm2 Behavior: When using iTerm2, the "Preparing full inspection value" message appears due to the large output, but after completion, the results are fully scrollable.

Possible Causes (from ChatGPT)

• Ghostty may not support the output buffering behavior used by the Rails console in the Heroku CLI.
• Some terminal capabilities may be missing, causing the "not fully functional" warning.

Screenshots

Ghostty

Iterm2

Logs (if applicable)

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional
Press RETURN to continue

I tried looking for a similar discussion, but haven't found anything.

Thanks!

[jcollie]

https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo

[ovidiuanca]

Thanks, I was not aware of this.