tmux scrolling enabling fails in msys2

Question

I recently started using tmux (in addition to screen), both in a Linux environment and in msys2 (which is also new to me and for which I cannot install screen).

Very similar to screen, starting tmux disables the shift-PgUp scrolling (and the scroll bar in the terminal emulator). For both terminal multiplexers the Internet does provide an easy solution. In the case of tmux it is adding this setting to the configuration:

set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

This works fine in the Linux environment but not in msys2. $TERM is set to xterm.

Unfortunately I am not familiar (yet) with the internal details of terminals so I neither understand why this setting is necessary nor why it could fail. After all before starting tmux the msys2 terminal emulator does have this capability.

The Internet contains a lot of questions about tmux scrolling but I could not find any for this problem with msys2.

Meta

I was thinking about whether this is the most suitable site for this question (and it may well not be). So if this does not result in a sufficient answer but you have an idea where it might make more sense to ask this then feel free to let me know.

Answer 1

Solution:

The provided configuration snippet:

set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

attempts to fix this by enabling terminal mode switching for xterm-like terminals. This should theoretically allow tmux to interact with the terminal correctly. However, it's not working for msys2.

Possible Alternatives:

Alternative Scrolling Methods:

Use Ctrl-B [, Ctrl-B ] for scrolling by page in tmux mode. Consider using the arrow keys for navigating within the visible area. Investigate msys2 Terminal Settings:

Look for options in the msys2 terminal settings that might influence terminal capabilities or scrolling behavior.