How to enable an audible bell?

[jguzman-tech]

I'd like to get vterm to register audible beeps such was when tab-complete fails or when running echo -e '\a'. I don't think it has anything to do with my .emacs because I tried running with --no-init and then only loading the vterm package and I still wasn't hearing the bell.

Is it possible to configure this?

[jguzman-tech]

Unrelated to the vterm package I saw that there's a way to set a visual bell in tmux.

set-window-option -g visual-bell on

Adding this to ~/.tmux.conf will enable visible notifications in the tmux status line (instead of audible beeps). Works for me when running commands in tmux from within a vterm buffer.

[pataquets]

I guess that either bell is completely ignored by libvterm or it's not being forwarded to Emacs.
Anyway, I would like to add that having a hook if this is ever passed to Emacs would be also very useful.

[dwymark-celestron]

I've tested #681 and it works as expected. Thanks to @jguzman-tech for contributing it.

Since it seems that PR #681 is not going to be merged any time soon, here are instructions you can use if you want to use this feature by patching it in.

Patching instructions

1. Clone the Repository

# Clone emacs-libvterm to a convenient location.
mkdir -p ~/.emacs.d/lib
cd ~/.emacs.d/lib
git clone https://github.com/akermu/emacs-libvterm.git
cd emacs-libvterm

The following steps assume your working directory is emacs-libvterm.

2. Apply the Bell Functionality Patch

# Download the patch
curl -o bell-patch.diff https://patch-diff.githubusercontent.com/raw/akermu/emacs-libvterm/pull/681.diff

# Apply the patch
git apply bell-patch.diff

3. Compile the Library

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make

# Verify the module was built
ls -la ../vterm-module.so

4. Configure Emacs

Add this to your Emacs configuration (e.g., init.el):

(use-package vterm
  ;; Add custom vterm library to load-path
  :load-path "~/.emacs.d/lib/emacs-libvterm"
  :config
  ;; Optional: Custom bell handler for testing
  (defun my-vterm-bell-handler ()
    "Display 'Bell!' message when vterm bell is triggered."
    (message "Bell!"))
  
  ;; Override the default ding function in vterm-mode
  (defun my-vterm-mode-setup ()
    "Setup custom bell handling for vterm mode."
    (setq-local ring-bell-function #'my-vterm-bell-handler))
  
  (add-hook 'vterm-mode-hook #'my-vterm-mode-setup)
  
  ;; Your other vterm configuration here...
  )