Third-party software problems

Before posting problems to the ConEmu issue tracker, you have to be sure that you issue belongs to ConEmu, but not to any third-party software!

For example, if you bump into some rendering problem in Chromium, you would not try to report the problem to Microsoft, because you run the browser in Windows, would you? Does it make sense?

Same with ConEmu. It’s a terminal, it just shows output of spawned console applications. Obviously, if third-party console application produces broken output, ConEmu can’t magically make this output valid.

Also, if you run ChildGui application (PuTTY, mintty, and so on) ConEmu does not control their behavior, and does not process their keyboard or mouse input. Use of ‘native’ console analogues is preferable.

• Check third-party software stand-alone
• Special note for WSL/bash
• Do not run your console tool in mintty
• Run your shell without profile
• Note about DefaultTerminal

Check third-party software stand-alone

First thing you have to do - run you application outside of ConEmu. Keep in mind few things!

• Run your application (shell) with same switches and environment as in ConEmu! Obviously, this is critical.
  • For example, the behaviour of cmd.exe is different, when you run it with /v switch, or you have specified cmd startup script with /k switch.
  • Third-party extensions (like clink for cmd, or PSReadLine for PowerShell) changes the behavior of the shell too.
• Run your application in the Standard Windows terminal using same console window and buffer sizes. A lot of problems ‘magically’ disappear when console window size is lesser than some value, hard-coded in the third-party software.
• Do not run your application in the mintty or its descendants. The reason is simple and obvious.
• There is Environment Settings page, where you may predefine environment variables, desired code page, and some other initializations. Take them into account too.

Special note for WSL/bash

Before posting bugs related to ‘Bash on Ubuntu on Windows’ a.k.a. ‘Windows Subsystem for Linux’ please check your problem without ConEmu.

Please read also:

• Bash on Ubuntu on Windows in ConEmu
• Note about DefaultTerminal

Do not run your console tool in mintty

You run console application developed for Windows, don’t you? So, why does that application require to be started in certain terminal emulator, instead of Standard Windows terminal?

Imagine, that you bought a game with mark ‘Designed for Windows’, but when you try to run it, you realize that you are required to install VirtualBox with Linux inside it. Nice enough, yeah? Even if these products are completely free.

So, I encourage you to check your application in the Standard Windows terminal and report the problem to the application authors, because almost all problems have nothing to fix within ConEmu.

There are special articles about this subsystem and related problems: Cygwin & MSys, Cygwin & ANSI, and more.

Experimental cygwin/msys terminal connector is on the way.

Run your shell without profile

When your shell starts up, it reads its configuration from ‘profile’. In theory, this operation must not depends on ConEmu existence, but you may try to run your shell without profile. Refer to your shell documentation.

Note about DefaultTerminal

If you have eneable Default Terminal feature, and you want to run console application from Win+R in the Standard Windows terminal, just add -new_console:z to command line.