eshell goes to the bottom of the page after executing a command

Question

when I execute a command on eshell the prompt switches to the bottom of the window. I have to C-l a few times to get it back on top. Once again after I execute anything it goes back to the bottom of the window. It is infuriating. How do I make sure the eshell prompt stays on 'top' of the window at all times with the previous commands being hidden above the window. I don't know if 'window' is correct terminology. Please correct me if not.

Answer 1

You can disable the Eshell's scroll feature using:

(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook
          (defun chunyang-eshell-mode-setup ()
            (remove-hook 'eshell-output-filter-functions
                         'eshell-postoutput-scroll-to-bottom)))

Notes, (eval-after-load "eshell" (remove-hook ...)) doesn't work correctly according to my experiment, it simply sets eshell-output-filter-functions to nil, I don't know the cause. You can also use the Custom interface with:

M-x customize-option RET eshell-output-filter-functions RET

this way works too and is much easier, since this option is available until Eshell has been invoked, if you can't find this option, type M-x eshell then try again.

Answer 2

You might check whether eshell-scroll-to-bottom-on-output is set to nil. Here's the documentation:

Documentation: Controls whether interpreter output causes window to scroll. If nil, then do not scroll. If t or ‘all’, scroll all windows showing buffer. If ‘this’, scroll only the selected window. If ‘others’, scroll only those that are not the selected window.

Answer 3

You need to set eshell-scroll-show-maximum-output to nil.

Sadly the documentation doesn't really explain the difference to eshell-scroll-to-bottom-on-output, but its default value is nil anyway and therefore isn't responsible for the described behaviour. In contrast the default of eshell-scroll-show-maximum-output is t.

My understanding is that enabling eshell-scroll-to-bottom-on-output causes eshell to scroll to the bottom if you have scrolled upwards the buffer and you have a program running which produces some output. It will just scroll in a way though, that the last line will be visible in the buffer, and will not align the last line to the bottom of the window.

An enabled eshell-scroll-show-maximum-output on the other hand ignores output produced by a third party program when you scroll upwards, but will align the current prompt with the bottom of the window (hence "maximising" the last output) when you issue any kind of input with triggers a new prompt.