xterm.js's onData hands the browser a plain string, and WebSocket.send(string)
always emits a TEXT frame — pty-attach.js only forwarded BINARY frames to
pty.write(), so every keystroke was silently dropped as an unparseable JSON
control message. Now any non-control text frame reaches the pty.
Deeper root cause of the terminal never accepting input at all: the /ws
WebSocketServer used the {server, path} shorthand, whose own internal
upgrade listener calls handleUpgrade() for every upgrade on the shared
http.Server and aborts with 400 on a path mismatch — killing /ws-pty/*
upgrades before the PTY server's own listener ever ran. Switched /ws to
noServer + a manual path-checked dispatch, matching /ws-pty's pattern.
node-pty ships prebuilt binaries for darwin/win32 only — on Linux it
needs a native build via its install script. The plugin's
--ignore-scripts install (scripts/plugin-bootstrap.js, deliberately
skipped to avoid requiring a build toolchain) silently left node-pty
unusable: server/lib/pty-attach.js's require() threw
"Cannot find module './prebuilds/linux-x64//pty.node'" the moment a
terminal was attached, leaving TerminalView permanently blank with no
visible error.
@lydell/node-pty is an API-compatible fork that ships each platform's
binary as a regular optionalDependency instead of a postinstall build
step, so a plain --ignore-scripts install resolves a working native
binding on Linux with no compiler needed. Verified by installing with
the exact `npm install --omit=dev --ignore-scripts` invocation the
plugin bootstrap uses and confirming require() succeeds.
nntrivi2001