iTerm2 @3.0.5_0: pasting with the mouse between tabs does not work (anymore)

[graziosi.angelo@…]

I had OSX 10.11.6 and upgraded iTerm2 from version 2 to 3 a few days ago and iTerm2 worked fine as expected.

Now I did a fresh (from scratch) reinstall of OSX 10.11.6 and I am doing a fresh reinstall of MacPorts.

After installed iTerm2, I discovered that pasting with mouse wheel between tabs does not work anymore.

In other words. Open iTerm2 with 2 tabs. In the first tab:

ls -lrt

double click on a word, Library, for example. Now switch to the other tab. Click mouse wheel to paste.. it DOES NOT paste. I used this mechanism since the first time I installed MacPorts and iTerm2 (2011).

I searched in iTerm2 Preferences an option to restore previous behavior, but I didn't find it...

For completeness, after I installed iTerm2 I did these customizations (the same I had in previous version of iTerm2):

iTerm2 Preferences:

  Appearence - Window - Show border around window
             - Deselect "Show tab numbers"
	     - Deselect "Show tab close buttons"

  Profiles - Text - Blinking cursor - 13pt Monaco
           - Window - Columns: 100, Rows: 26
           - Terminal - Unlimited scrollback
	   - Colors - Load Presets - Pastel (Dark Background)
	                             (Default was : Dark Background)

  Advanced - Tip of the Day - Disable Tip of the Day? Yes

Ciao, Angelo.

[graziosi.angelo@…]

But this version of iTerm2 seems very bad. Also when one copy/paste in the same tab has problems.

Suppose you have iTerm2 with only one tab/window. Double click on a word of displayed text. Now press mouse wheel to paste. It pastes. If you now just press left mouse button (sometime, this is a random user action) and then you want to re-paste your first selection, it does not paste anymore. You have to re-double click your selection...

But this is not the only issue of this version. Often I have to restart iTerm2 (to see, foe example, if changes in bashrc etc. have effect), so first I close all tabs (CMD-W) and then quit iTerm2 (CMD-Q). When I restart it, more windows open with warning that one session closed.. and OSX sends a notification about sessions.. I find this very confusing.. and I haven't a simple recipe to reproduce the issue. It happens often but apparently at random..

This version should be retired. Is there a way to reinstall previous version 2?

TIA, Angelo.

[graziosi.angelo@…]

Ok. I did the following trick/workaround to get things working as before.

As I wrote, the issue came out only after I reinstalled from scratch 10.11.6 and so MacPorts. Before, when I upgraded from iTerm2-2.1 to iTerm2-3.0.5, the issue was absent. So I reinstalled 2.1 from iTerm2 web site. More precisely (after closing all iTerm2 and from Terminal.app),

wget https://iterm2.com/downloads/beta/iTerm2-2_1.zip
sudo mv /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app-3.0.5
sudo bsdtar -xvof iTerm2-2_1.zip -C /Applications/MacPorts/
sudo mv /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm.app /Applications/MacPorts/iTerm2.app

Starting iTerm2, now, still has the issue.. I did some clean up:

find . -name "*term2*"
find . -name "*term2*" -delete

find . -name "*erm2*"
find . -name "*Term*"

rm -rf Library/Application\ Support/iTerm
rm -rf Library/Application\ Support/iTerm2

Now restarted iTerm2 and did some configuration (see my OP). Now copy/paste seem to work as expected. So, close iTerm2 and from Termnal.app:

cd /Applications/MacPorts
sudo mv iTerm2.app iTerm2.app-2.1
sudo mv iTerm2.app-3.0.5 iTerm2.app
[sudo rm -rf iTerm2.app-2.1]

(where the last step is optional). Now all seem to work fine. As you see, the issue seems a configuration problem. Maybe someone can clarify this.

Thanks, Angelo.

[graziosi.angelo@…]

Just for completeness, to reproduce the issue you have to start iTerm2 3.X as in a first installation without configuration file. In short, from Terminal.app:

find . -name "*term2*"
find . -name "*term2*" -delete
find . -name "*term2*"

if there are folder regarding iterm2, delete them, then

find . -name "*erm2*"
rm -rf Library/Application\ Support/iTerm2

and

find . -name "*Term*"
rm -rf Library/Application\ Support/iTerm

After the cleaning, reboot.

Now start iTerm2 3.X: as long as text remains selected it pastes but just clicking in an empty space so the selection goes away it does not paste any more...

[markemer (Mark Anderson)]

We updated to 3.0.13 - see if things are better.

[markemer (Mark Anderson)]

iTerm2 Setup

[markemer (Mark Anderson)]

It seems like this is an upstream problem. Middle button single click is assigned to paste. We should close this as 'wontfix' or whatever fix upstream needs.

[markemer (Mark Anderson)]

After discussion I think this should be closed as an upstream bug.

[markemer (Mark Anderson)]

Turns out this was a configuration error, not a bug. Middle button single click needs to be set to "Paste from Selection" not "Paste from Clipboard"