What should `$env:TERM` be for the new Windows console?

[rkitover]

Is there any standard for what $env:TERM should be for native Windows console apps supporting the new console capabilities?

For Neovim, I discovered that setting:

$env:TERM = 'vtpcon'

or leaving it unset enables support for the new console.

Setting:

$env:TERM = 'xterm-truecolor'

also seems to work correctly, and supports 24 bit color.

[rkitover]

I settled on this solution for now, and it seems work well with everything:

$env:TERM = 'xterm-256color'
$env:COLORTERM = 'truecolor'

, as far as I know this is very commonly used on Linux as well.

The advantage is that the vast majority of terminfo databases and builtin terminal libraries recognize xterm-256color, it's been around for quite a while, and such programs often have truecolor support as well. Sometimes some minor tweaks are needed for this, like the $env:COLORTERM variable which is not necessary in my case, or minor adjustments to the terminal definition like here:

tmux/tmux#1246 (comment)

. If there are terminal sequences and features this configuration does not support, we should define an $env:TERM name and put it in the ncurses package, which is where most systems get their terminfo database.

Related:

git-for-windows/git#3629
neovim/neovim#17021

[zadjii-msft]

Yea, that's what I'd broadcast us as. I know we're not technically 100% compliant with xterm-256color, but that seems to offer the broadest support. If we're not living up to xterm-256color, then that's a bug for us to fix.

There's also other discussion in #1040, #11057, #8303, #2958. Note that I'd not recommend ms-terminal - that's not maintained by us, nor would I expect it to be available on many distros, or kept reasonably up to date.