Terminal hyperlink targets can become inaccessible in bb

[fdx-peter]

Summary

Terminal programs can render named links using OSC 8 escape sequences. In bb terminals, the child process is not told that hyperlink support is available, so programs that conditionally emit OSC 8 may output only a plain-text label and leave the target inaccessible.

On desktop/web, copying a terminal selection from the context menu can also return only the clicked visual row when the selection spans soft-wrapped rows.

Versions

• bb 0.40.0
• macOS
• Reproduced in a bb terminal
• Confirmed against origin/main at commit 31d66d9d45bc8ff1483d5e4c6401c434b610dc4b

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a terminal in bb.

2. Check whether hyperlink support is advertised:

   printf 'FORCE_HYPERLINK=%s\n' "${FORCE_HYPERLINK:-<unset>}"

3. Run any terminal program that emits a named OSC 8 hyperlink only when terminal hyperlink support is detected.

4. Try to activate the rendered label.

5. Print a URL long enough to soft-wrap:

   python3 -c 'print("https://example.com/" + "abcdefghij" * 20)'

6. Select the wrapped URL and copy it using the terminal context menu.

Expected behavior

• Child processes can detect OSC 8 hyperlink support.
• Named hyperlinks can be activated through the existing safe external-navigation flow, with the exact target disclosed before opening.
• Copying from the terminal context menu returns the exact xterm selection across soft-wrapped rows.

Actual behavior

• Hyperlink capability is not advertised to child processes, so named links may be flattened to labels with no usable target.
• Context-menu copying may capture only one visual row of a soft-wrapped selection.

Relevant code

• Host terminal environment
• Web/desktop terminal link handling
• Web/desktop terminal event handling

Existing-issue check

• Add touch text selection and copy controls to the mobile terminal #1764 is related to mobile touch selection and copy controls, but does not cover terminal capability advertisement or desktop/web context-menu copying.
• Clipboard copy actions fail on plain-HTTP LAN origins #1590 concerned Clipboard API failures on plain-HTTP LAN origins, which is a different root cause.
• No existing issue or fetched origin branch was found that covers this failure.

Priority

Medium

AGENT GENERATED

[SawyerHood]

Reproduction & root-cause report: https://get-bb.github.io/reports/issues/2469.html

• Verdict: REPRODUCED · root-cause confidence: high
• Root cause (short): The host omits the hyperlink capability variable, and the shared terminal omits a safe OSC 8 handler.
• Linked PR review: Fix terminal hyperlinks and wrapped selection copying #2479 → REQUEST CHANGES — The outer React handler runs after xterm can replace the macOS selection. Eight mobile changes also target removed code.
• Proposed fix: Set FORCE_HYPERLINK=1. Add a safe shared-app OSC 8 handler. Capture terminal.getSelection() before xterm handles the context-menu event.
• Caveats: The live browser ran on Linux. The event check set the exact xterm macOS option. Cleanup removed all isolated processes, ports, data, and the worktree.

The report has copy-paste repro steps, screenshots where the bug is visual, code permalinks at the base commit, and repro artifacts. It was independently re-run by a second agent (see its Verification section).

AGENT GENERATED: by GPT-5.6-Sol