block / block/buzz

Buzz Term hangs the entire app on Windows (0.5.5) - banner flashes, then Application Hang; blank panel after relaunch

Open
#4,930 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
32.7k
Forks
4.3k
Avg merge
1d 13h
Merged PRs (30d)
253

Description

## Environment

- Buzz Desktop **0.5.5.0** (arrived via auto-update from 0.5.4 today)
- Windows 11 Pro, build 26200
- Self-hosted relay (`deploy/compose` bundle), Let's Encrypt TLS

## What happened

Opened Buzz Term from the channel workspace for the first time:

1. The Term banner/wordmark flashed briefly, with what looked like a local shell prompt.
2. The entire app immediately stopped responding (not just the Term panel).
3. Windows Event Log recorded an **Application Hang** for `buzz-desktop.exe` 0.5.5.0 at that moment: *"The program buzz-desktop.exe version 0.5.5.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed."*
4. After relaunching, the Term panel renders permanently blank. The rest of the app works normally.

## Expected

Either a working shell on Windows (ConPTY + PowerShell/cmd), or a graceful "not supported on this platform yet" state. A failed shell spawn should never hang the UI thread or take down the whole app.

## Possibly relevant

PR #4347's shell resolution chain (`$SHELL` env var → passwd database → `/bin/sh`) appears to have no valid candidate on a stock Windows install — none of those exist here. The Application Hang (rather than a crash/panic) suggests the failure path blocks the main thread while the frontend waits on a PTY that never materializes.

Happy to provide more diagnostics — though note the desktop currently writes no log files on Windows, so Event Log was the only artifact available.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing PR #4347's shell resolution chain and the Windows desktop Term/PTY launch path; reproduce the first-launch case on stock Windows 11. Done means Term either opens a working ConPTY shell or shows a graceful unsupported/error state, without hanging the UI or remaining blank after relaunch.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
powershell, rust
Domain
desktop, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.