st not seeing aliases

[stanl]

Not sure if I messed up something along the way, but...

I've installed st-0.8.3 thru pkg_add -u.

Now anytime I try to use one of my aliases (cls=clear for example):

cadfael$ cls
/bin/ksh: cls: not found
cadfael$

Aliases work fine in xterm.

But if I do

ksh -l

Then aliases work fine in st.

[jggimi]

I've never used st. But I found this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/St#Shell which states the default shell is /bin/sh, and explains how to change this. I assume you can set this to /bin/ksh, and perhaps add -l.

[stanl]

No good. I downloaded st from suckless.org and tried both options in the Arch wiki:

To change the default shell for st, edit this line:

static char *shell = "/bin/sh";

Or start st with the desired shell as last argument:

$ st options fish

Not sure what it means but I noticed that in old builds of st it wrote 4 entries into /usr/share/terminfo. This new version writes 7. I also built one of the older 0.8.2 versions I still had which used to work and now doesn't.

I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by stanl

I'm open to suggestions.

I will guess that this is not an OpenBSD-specific problem, so would recommend the dev@ mailing list mentioned in https://suckless.org/community/, it seems to be the method for end-user support upstream. There is an archive, but it isn't very searchable.

[jggimi]

You can search from Google with "site:lists.suckless.org" and from there I found this, which might help.

https://lists.suckless.org/hackers/1611/13652.html

[stanl]

st -e /bin/ksh -l seems to work.

Thank you

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by stanl

in old builds of st it wrote 4 entries into /usr/share/terminfo. This new version writes 7.

That's an upstream change, suckless have added more terminfo entries.[0][1][2]

Originally Posted by stanl

st -e /bin/ksh -l seems to work.

I don't think you should run ksh as a login shell if you're using it interactively, job control will be disabled.

To set the interactive shell in st try exporting it as a variable:

export SHELL=/bin/ksh

^ Put that line in ~/.xsession if you're using xenodm(1) to start the desktop.

If that doesn't work then replace -l with -i.

[stanl]

You will have to excuse my lack of knowledge but I'm not clear on what you mean.

echo $SHELL returns /bin/ksh

In ~/.aliases I have: alias st='st -e /bin/ksh -l'

I use spectrwm as a window manager and have:
program[term] = st -e /bin/ksh -l

This is the only way st seems to work for me.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by stanl

You will have to excuse my lack of knowledge but I'm not clear on what you mean.

echo $SHELL returns /bin/ksh

Yes, that is as it should be.

Very strange that st won't parse your shell configuration file though

Is the output of

echo $ENV

the same in both xterm and st?

Originally Posted by stanl

In ~/.aliases I have: alias st='st -e /bin/ksh -l'

I use spectrwm as a window manager and have:
program[term] = st -e /bin/ksh -l

This is the only way st seems to work for me.

Does it still work if you change -l to -i? It's better to start ksh as an interactive shell if you're using it interactively

[stanl]

In st:

slaurel:~$ echo $ENV
/home/slaurel/.kshrc
slaurel:~$

In xterm:

slaurel:~$ echo $ENV
/home/slaurel/.kshrc
slaurel:~$

If I replace the "l" with "i" in "st -e /bin/ksh -l" aliases no longer work in st but work in xterm.

Also, not sure if it means anything, but if I start an xterm and then start st within the xterm, aliases work.