Themes seem to sometimes not work through WSL

[jquesada2016]

Summary

When running Helix within WSL, through a terminal emulator, such as the new Windows terminal emulator, or Alacritty, then themes seem to not be applied, and instead I get only black-and-white styling:

However, when I access helix through WSL, from, for example an integrated terminal within VS Code, themes work fine!

Not sure what's going on here. The runtime files, and themes definitely seem to be there, since VS Code's terminal is able to pick up the colors.

Reproduction Steps

I tried installing from package manager, as well as building from lates master, then switched to latest 23.05. I also tried using both HELIX_RUNTIME environment variables, as well as symlinking the runtime files into ~/.config/helix/runtime. Nothing worked, besides running Helix within WSL inside VS Code

I expected this to happen:

Themes to work, regardless of the terminal emulator I used.

Instead, this happened:

Theme colors only seemed to be applied when attaching through VS Code's integrated terminal.

Helix log

~/.cache/helix/helix.log

2023-05-27T19:31:59.413 helix_view::editor [ERROR] editor error: Unsupported theme: theme requires true color support

Platform

Ubuntu through WSL on Windows 11

Terminal Emulator

Alacritty v0.11.0 and Windows Terminal version 1.16.10262.0

Helix Version

helix 23.05

[jquesada2016]

Looking at the log attached above, I noticed it says true color support is required, which is strange, because both Alacritty and Windows Terminal support true color...so not sure how to trubleshoot this.

[kirawi]

It's not picked up when running WSL. You can override detection in your config: https://docs.helix-editor.com/configuration.html

[kirawi]

You might have more luck checking out Windows Terminal resources. This isn't a Helix issue

[KamWithK]

I haven't tried running as sudo yet
Normally good practice not to anyways aha

[nowhereman1999]

oh sorry,I didn't put the link that I mentioned before,actually there does have the requirement for using sudo hx file so that you can have rights to write to it,but the problem
is when I use sudo hx to open file,the config loaded in helix is no longer mine as you can see the theme is back to the default black-and-white styling:

when the theme loaded normally as I just using hx to open the file:

[dawkrish]

there is gap
i can see wsl terminal at boundaries and hx in the center
how to remove that

[BrianShTsoi]

You can change it with Windows Teminal Settings.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62578458/vim-nvim-not-filling-windows-terminal

[knightpp]

The selected answer did not help me, but here's my solution.

To debug open hx and type :theme <tab> you will probably see

To fix that, I set TERMCOLOR env var to truecolor (source)

[kirawi]

It's very likely you did not place the config in the correct place, as at the very least Helix could not read the true color setting. One common mistake people make with WSL is keeping the config on the Windows side while Helix itself is installed in the Linux side.

[knightpp]

Oh, I see the issue now, I did not understand your answer. Thanks.

I needed to set true-color in ~/.config/helix/config.toml

[editor]
true-color = true

[senthilnow]

[editor]
true-color = true

This worked :-) +1

[ByteJuggler]

Can also set in the env e.g. execute in shell export COLORTERM=truecolor or add this line to say ~/.bashrc, then you don't need to override in config.toml.