GNU screen 5.0.2 + OSC 8 hyperlinks

This is the unmodified Debian source package of GNU screen 5.0.2-1 (from Debian sid) with one extra patch that adds OSC 8 hyperlink support, backported to Ubuntu 24.04 (noble).

The patch is debian/patches/109-osc8-hyperlinks.patch. Everything else is upstream/Debian as released.

What it does

Terminal hyperlinks (ESC ]8;;URI ESC \ text ESC ]8;; ESC \), as printed by ls --hyperlink=auto, gcc, systemd, etc., are dropped by stock screen. With this patch they are clickable inside screen too:

• links are stored with the text, so they survive redraws, window switches, split regions, copy mode / scrollback, resizing and reattach
• only sent to terminals that support them; others see plain text
• URIs up to 8192 bytes; control characters are rejected, so a link can't inject escape sequences into your terminal
• over-long OSC strings no longer spill garbage onto the screen

Sessions started by screen 4.x can still be reattached with screen -r, but screen -X / -Q against them needs the old 4.x binary.

Configuration

On by default for terminals whose $TERM matches xterm*, *-256color, *-direct, foot*, kitty*, alacritty*, wezterm*, ghostty*, contour*, tmux*, rxvt-unicode*, mintty*, iterm*, vte*, gnome*, konsole* or st-*.

In ~/.screenrc:

hyperlinks off                # disable globally (also at runtime: C-a :hyperlinks off)
termcapinfo linux HL          # enable for a terminal not in the list
termcapinfo xterm* HL@        # disable for a terminal

C-a :hyperlinks without argument shows the current state.

Build

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b     # binary .deb
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -S -sa # source package (e.g. for a PPA)

PPA

Ubuntu builds (only for 24.04LTS for now) are available in my hacking PPA: https://launchpad.net/~kedazo/+archive/ubuntu/ubuntu-hacking

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kedazo/ubuntu-hacking
sudo apt update
sudo apt install screen

License: GPL-3.0-or-later, same as GNU screen.