BUG: window-inherit-working-directory doesn't work

[danielepintore]

Issue Description

When setting:

working-directory = inherit
window-inherit-working-directory = true

in my config i expect that when i open a new window it should have the same path as the older one, instead I get the default home. Starting ghostty from the .desktop and terminal doesn't change anything.
To debug the issue I've compiled ghostty from source and logged the pwd value when opening a new windows, it is null. I think this may be some shell integration problem but in the log i see this:

info(io_exec): found Ghostty resources dir: /home/daniele/Documents/projects/ghostty/zig-out/share/ghostty
debug(io_exec): appending ghostty bin to path dir=/home/daniele/Documents/projects/ghostty/zig-out/bin
info(io_exec): shell integration automatically injected shell=termio.shell_integration.Shell.zsh

so it seems that the shell integration is loaded.
I'm using Arch Linux with zsh.

Expected Behavior

Ghostty should open a new window in the previous window directory

Actual Behavior

Ghostty opens the new window in the home

Reproduction Steps

Open Ghostty
press ctrl+shift+n

Ghostty Logs

No response

Ghostty Version

Ghostty 1.1.3-arch1

Version
  - version: 1.1.3-arch1
  - channel: tip
Build Config
  - Zig version: 0.13.0
  - build mode : builtin.OptimizeMode.ReleaseFast
  - app runtime: apprt.Runtime.gtk
  - font engine: font.main.Backend.fontconfig_freetype
  - renderer   : renderer.OpenGL
  - libxev     : main.Backend.epoll
  - desktop env: other
  - GTK version:
    build      : 4.18.2
    runtime    : 4.18.6
  - libadwaita : enabled
    build      : 1.7.0
    runtime    : 1.7.5
  - libX11     : enabled
  - libwayland : enabled

OS Version Information

Arch Linux

(Linux only) Display Server

Wayland

(Linux only) Desktop Environment/Window Manager

Hyprland

Minimal Ghostty Configuration

working-directory = inherit
window-inherit-working-directory = true
shell-integration = zsh

Additional Relevant Configuration

Manually sourcing the shell integration in my zsh config doesn't help.

I acknowledge that:

• I have reviewed the FAQ and confirm that my issue is NOT among them.
• I have searched the Ghostty repository (both open and closed Discussions and Issues) and confirm this is not a duplicate of an existing issue or discussion.
• I have checked the "Preview" tab on all text fields to ensure that everything looks right, and have wrapped all configuration and code in code blocks with a group of three backticks (```) on separate lines.

[danielepintore]

With some trial and error i think i found the problem. I have set in /etc/zsh/zshenv the ZDOTDIR variable to point to my zsh configuration:
/etc/zsh/zshenv:

export ZDOTDIR="$HOME/.config/zsh"

If i remove this ghostty work as expected. Now, why it has some problems when i set a custom ZDOTDIR?
edit: manually sourcing the .zshenv in the ghostty shell integration directory make the function work as expected, but still i don't know why it isn't sourced by default

[danielepintore]

I found the solution: Move the contents of /etc/zsh/zshenv to ~/.zshenv
This seems to let ghostty work fine. I'll not mark this as solution because maybe this is a bug in ghostty. As soon I've some feedback I'll mark this as solved.

[jparise]

I haven't been able to reproduce the problem that you're seeing yet.

I'm not a regular zsh user, so I did some deeper reading about the startup sequence, and here's what I think I know:

1. zsh always reads /etc/zshenv. (I assume that's the same as /etc/zsh/zshenv on your system.)
2. If ZDOTDIR is set, it influences how the rest of the configuration files are loaded. When ZDOTDIR is unset, $HOME is used.
3. We (ghostty) temporarily override ZDOTDIR to load our shell integration files. From our .zshenv script, we restore the original ZDOTDIR and then manually source $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv.
4. There are other ZDOTDIR-based files like .zprofile and .zshrc. I'm not yet sure if we need to do extra things to ensure those are loaded from the expected location.

Our zsh shell integration is based on kitty's implementation. I see that they have a (closed) issue that seems similar to your report: kovidgoyal/kitty#6330

Given all of that, I'll need to learn more about some of the ways this system can fail before I can help work toward a solution for what you're seeing. The problem may be triggered by something you have in one of your personal scripts that I haven't thought about. If you're able to continuing narrowing it down, confirm what I learned above, or otherwise debug, that would be a big help.

[rhodes-b]

note you shouldn't need to set anything both of them have defaults

https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference#working-directory
not always inherit read when it isn't but most of the time it is inherit

https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference#window-inherit-working-directory
this is true look at ghostty +show-config --default | grep window-inherit-working-directory`

it does require shell integration to work just because it says it loaded doesn't mean something in your shell config how the default shell integration is injected

shell-integration says it shouldn't mess up your existing ZDOTDIR but i don't know how that works maybe manually sourcing shell-integration would work better for you
https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/tree/a88689ca754a6eb7dce6015b85ccb1416b5363d8/src/shell-integration#zsh

[mitchellh]

cc @jparise

[samyak-jain]

Interestingly, I am able to make this work by either 1) Opening kitty and then running ghostty from there 2) Manually sourcing the shell integration. I am also able to reproduce this exact same behavior by building ghostty from source.