'Failed to open controlling terminal' error when trying to remote control from vim

[Trevor Hartman]

If I try running a kitty @ remote control command from within vim, I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):                                                                                                                                                                    
  File "Python/runpy.py", line 280, in run_path                                                                                                                                                       
  File "Python/runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code                                                                                                                                                       
  File "kitty/__main__.py", line 119, in <module>                                                                                                                                                     
  File "kitty/__main__.py", line 115, in main                                                                                                                                                         
  File "kitty/__main__.py", line 22, in remote_control                                                                                                                                                
  File "kitty/remote_control.py", line 175, in main                                                                                                                                                   
  File "kitty/remote_control.py", line 119, in do_io                                                                                                                                                  
  File "kitty/utils.py", line 374, in __enter__                                                                                                                                                       
OSError: Failed to open controlling terminal: /dev/tty (identified with ctermid()) with error: Device not configured    

It looks like this FAQ addresses it, but I'm not sure how to apply that to my situation.

For example, in vim, these commands throw the above error:

:!kitty @ ls

and

:echo system("kitty @ ls")

[Kovid Goyal]

Presumably the environment within vim does not include a functioning tty
device. Use the --to argument to kitty @ and a --listen-on to kitty to
communicate via a dedicated socket instead.

[Conrad]

I found this github issue trying to debug an issue with vim-slime running on neovim.

The plugin tries to run kitty @ send-text to send the selected text to a terminal window, but crashes instead with the Traceback in this ticket.

As it turns out, Neovim doesn't give you a tty when you run commands:

:!tty
[No write since last change]
not a tty

shell returned 1

Press ENTER or type command to continue

I got around this by setting listen-on globally in my kitty.conf

listen_on unix:/tmp/mykitty

And rely on the KITTY_LISTEN_ON environment variable to automatically find the socket in use. This nvim mapping is what I have started to use to send the selected text from nvim to the second window of the active tab:

vmap <silent> <leader>k ::w !kitty @ --to=$KITTY_LISTEN_ON send-text --match=num:1 --stdin<CR><CR>

You need two colons, :: in that mapping since ::w !cmd expands to :'<,'> :w !cmd at runtime. More details at :help :write_c.

[Mike]

I got around this by setting listen-on globally in my kitty.conf

listen_on unix:/tmp/mykitty

Thank you for posting this! This fixed it for me 🥳