mouse stops working after vscode ide reload

[jjallaire-aisi]

If you are running a textual application within VS Code and the IDE is reloaded (e.g. after an extension installation for via the Developer: Reload Window command) the mouse stops working in the textual application. Note that the application is still running/working and keyboard gestures all work as expected.

You can repo by running the stopwatch app from the textual repo:

cd textual/docs/examples/tutorial
python stopwatch.py

Then, execute Developer: Reload Window. Mouse gestures will no longer work.

Textual Diagnostics

Versions

Name	Value
Textual	0.89.1
Rich	13.9.4

Python

Name	Value
Version	3.10.12
Implementation	CPython
Compiler	GCC 11.4.0
Executable	/home/ubuntu/UKGovernmentBEIS/inspect_ai/.venv/bin/python3

Operating System

Name	Value
System	Linux
Release	6.8.0-1018-aws
Version	#19~22.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 9 16:48:22 UTC 2024

Terminal

Name	Value
Terminal Application	vscode (1.95.3)
TERM	xterm-256color
COLORTERM	truecolor
FORCE_COLOR	Not set
NO_COLOR	Not set

Rich Console options

Name	Value
size	width=87, height=15
legacy_windows	False
min_width	1
max_width	87
is_terminal	True
encoding	utf-8
max_height	15
justify	None
overflow	None
no_wrap	False
highlight	None
markup	None
height	None

[github-actions]

We found the following entry in the FAQ which you may find helpful:

• Why do some key combinations never make it to my app?

Feel free to close this issue if you found an answer in the FAQ. Otherwise, please give us a little time to review.

This is an automated reply, generated by FAQtory

[willmcgugan]

I don't think this is something we can fix. I think you should raise it on the VSCode repository.

[jjallaire-aisi]

Thank you for the response! You definitely know more about this than I do, but one important thing to note is that if I put the Textual app in a tmux session (still within VS Code) then the mouse works fine after a reload. So there may be something peculiar to the handshaking between textual and xterm.js.

I'm afraid that if I simply post a bug on the VS Code repo that says "textual apps don't respond to the mouse after a reload" it will basically just die on the vine there (as many bugs with merit tend to do there). I'm thinking that given the ubiquity of VS Code terminal usage that as mysterious as this interaction may be you will have both more incentive and more technical basis to assess than they do. I guess I'm saying that even if the fix is on their end, I see the chances of them prioritising the research required to sort this out as vanishingly small. Maybe we can give them an assist of some kind that will make it more of a no brainer for them to fix.

[jjallaire-aisi]

Discovered what might be a good clue here: if you suspend and restore the app (e.g. using with self.app.suspend()) then mouse support is restored.

[jjallaire-aisi]

A further update, simply calling _enable_mouse_support() on the driver also restores mouse support.

So if there is some way for textual to detect that mouse support has been disabled then this might be a path to making it work.

[jjallaire-aisi]

Here is a workaround that I came up with (re-enable mouse support whenever the app gains focus): UKGovernmentBEIS/inspect_ai@8ce3409

Perhaps tmux is doing something like this?

Not sure if you want to do this in textual, but I will say that the user failure mode is pretty unpleasant for any app where the user has "work in progress" that is apparently lost to the frozen app. It might be consider gross to re-send these ANSI codes, but then again it might just be a necessary concession to the vagaries of xterm.js.