[Usability] Pulumi CLI flickering

[karolzlot]

Affected feature

When you use for example pulumi new console really flickers.

Please improve it so it doesn't flicker.

Seems like when I use pulumi up, then yes, no, details menu also flickers a bit.

On video you can see Windows Terminal with Powershell 7.1.4

(no sound in the video below)

5HmRmqP3ty.mp4

[mikhailshilkov]

@AaronFriel can you see this on your Windows terminal?

[AaronFriel]

@mikhailshilkov confirmed, it appears that the behavior of the prompt when "redrawing" the list is to clear output and rewrite it from the beginning. This causes the prompt to go back to the first line:

Please choose a template:  [Use arrows to move, enter to select, type to filter]

And then as text is written, the terminal scrolls.

[AaronFriel]

Only noticeable on the Windows builds though, in Powershell & legacy Command Prompt. I reproduced it independently here, you can just barely - for a frame - see it scroll to the "Please choose" line.

Command.Prompt.-.pulumi.new.2022-02-01.00-31-57.mp4

[AaronFriel]

I was screen sharing with a user of Pulumi and saw this on macOS using the built-in terminal and it appeared much worse than I've seen before. That could be an artifact of Zoom latency, but the sharer said it made it very hard to read as they scrolled through templates.

[justinvp]

I was wondering if we should do something like this: jestjs/jest#15008

Looks like there is an upstream issue, and there's a comment mentioning DEC private mode 2026: AlecAivazis/survey#436