snap: export TERMINFO_DIRS so child shells find xterm-ghostty#12662
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Without this, shells spawned by ghostty cannot find the xterm-ghostty terminfo entry because ncurses only searches standard system paths. The snap's terminfo lives inside the snap sandbox and is inaccessible unless TERMINFO_DIRS is set explicitly.
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I realize that these patches are both about snaps, but this should be split into two PRs. |
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You need to disclose your use of AI. See https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md |
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added, got my reference from #9857 |
kenvandine
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May 20, 2026
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Summary
When Ghostty is installed via snap on Ubuntu, programs running inside Ghostty (e.g.
clear) fail with:The snap ships terminfo at
${SNAP}/share/terminfobut the launcher never exportsTERMINFO_DIRS, so ncurses in child shells falls back to the host's system database. On Ubuntu 24.04 (ncurses 6.4) the system database predates thexterm-ghosttyentry, so the lookup fails.This is the same fix as the auto-closed #12303 and resolves #12304.
Fix
Export
TERMINFO_DIRSinsnap/local/launcherso all child processes can resolve the bundled entry without manual setup.Local build (how this PR was verified)
Remix the installed store snap by swapping
app/launcherwith the patched one:sudo unsquashfs -d /tmp/g \ /var/lib/snapd/snaps/ghostty_$(readlink /snap/ghostty/current).snap sudo cp snap/local/launcher /tmp/g/app/launcher sudo mksquashfs /tmp/g /tmp/ghostty-test.snap -comp xz -noappend sudo snap install --dangerous --classic /tmp/ghostty-test.snapThen launch
/snap/bin/ghosttyand runclear.Test plan
Verified locally on Ubuntu 24.04 / arm64.
zsh/bashinside Ghostty,clearsucceeds.infocmp xterm-ghosttyresolves to/snap/ghostty/current/share/terminfo/x/xterm-ghostty.~/.terminfo/required.AI Disclosure
Claude Code was used to investigate the root cause and to draft this single-line launcher change. The fix is identical to the proposal in the linked discussion (#12304). I manually verified by remixing the installed snap with the patched launcher and confirming
clearandinfocmp xterm-ghosttywork without manually copying terminfo entries into~/.terminfo/(original workaround shared in the discussion).