'xterm-kitty': unknown terminal type

Question

When I run vifm in kitty, "'xterm-kitty': unknown terminal type" is displayed. I didn't find any information on the Internet about others having this issue. What's the problem?

Answer 1

This suggests that you have $TERM set to xterm-kitty, but there is no such entry in the terminfo database (e.g., file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-kitty doesn't exist).

If other applications work in this case, then are you using Vifm via AppImage? AppImage comes with its own terminfo database (inside of it) which lacks xterm-kitty.

Comments

Exactly I'm using AppImage. Might try other installation instead. Thank you.

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A found a workaround for AppImage: export TERMINFO_DIRS=/usr/share/terminfo.

ncurses is supposed to look at /usr/share/terminfo, but due to the way it was built for AppImage, it looks in /share/terminfo instead. This will be fixed in the next release, thanks for bringing it up.

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In fact, in kitty's case, it sets environment variable TERMINFO to point to its own terminfo folder in its distribution. I fixed the issue by copying its terminfo file to a local ~/.terminfo folder. So it might be vifm not reading TERMINFO? Because all other programs (including some AppImage, like neovim) seem to run without problem. Just for your information.

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A wrapper in AppImage does export TERMINFO=$APPDIR/usr/share/terminfo, which overrides $TERMINFO set externally. Maybe it should set $TERMINFO_DIRS instead.