Add support for OSC8 hyperlinks in TTY output #63082
Description
🔍 Search Terms
"OSC8", "hyperlinks", "terminal emulator", "tty", "build output"
✅ Viability Checklist
- This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
- This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
- This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
- This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, new syntax sugar for JS, etc.)
- This isn't a request to add a new utility type: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/No-New-Utility-Types
- This feature would agree with the rest of our Design Goals: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/TypeScript-Design-Goals
⭐ Suggestion
Wrap file paths from build output with OSC8 hyperlink markers.
📃 Motivating Example
When the build output contains errors, it is convenient to be able to CMD+click on files path to directly see the error in the editor.
Most modern terminal emulators (iTerm, Ghostty, tmux, etc.) support CMD+clicking on file names in order to open them in the default app. These terminals use two different approaches to enable this; OSC8 hyperlinks and RegExp. The issue with the Regexp based approach is that their behavior is inconsistent across terminal implementations, making them unreliable. OSC8 hyperlinks, on the other hand, are unambiguous and reliable.
💻 Use Cases
-
What do you want to use this for?
When building a TS project, a change in a dependency might cause issues in dependent code, causingtsc buildto return errors. -
What shortcomings exist with current approaches?
Currently, I can sometimes CMD+click the filename, but this often fails (because the terminal does not properly infer the actual file location using the RegExp based method) -
What workarounds are you using in the meantime?
Manually copy the file path in the terminal output + Manually open IDE + Manually open file