On tramp shell, commands like `head`, `tail`, `man`, `git log`, etc... output all text at once instead of prompting

Question

I use tramp-shell for ssh to another machine. Setup as follows:

(defun spawn-shell (name)
  "Invoke shell test"
  (interactive "MName of shell buffer to create: ")
  (pop-to-buffer (get-buffer-create name))
  (shell (current-buffer))
  )

(defun ssh-shell-impl (host)
    (let ((host-name (ssh-username host)))
      (let ((ssh-home-path (concat (concat (concat "/ssh:" host) ":/home/") host-name)))
        (let ((default-directory ssh-home-path))
          (find-file ssh-home-path)
          (let ((shell-name (if (get-buffer "shell") (concat host-name "-shell") "shell")))
            (spawn-shell shell-name)
            )
          )
        )
      )
    )

(defun ssh-shell ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((host (read-string "Enter Host: ")))
    (ssh-shell-impl host)
    )
  )

This works perfectly for everything except commands where the output amount is suppose to be interactive (think man tail). Instead of outputting a portion and prompting to exit/more lines, the entire content is dumped.

Is there a way to get the interactive output on tramp-shell?

Emacs version info:

GNU Emacs 27.1

Answer 1

No, this isn't supported by Tramp. It suppresses all pagers when calling interactive commands like man. See "PAGER=cat" in tramp-remote-process-environment.

And even if you change this to "PAGER=less" or so it wouldn't help, because the page break wouldn't be handled in the shell command's output.