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Ghostty Terminal Emulator

We ain’t afraid of no Ghostty 2024-12-18

Section titled “We ain’t afraid of no Ghostty 2024-12-18”

Source: Changlog Interview Episode 622, We ain’t afraid of no Ghostty

Summary: Describes Ghostty, the terminal emulator, and it’s vision and terminal as a platform.

  • Side project motivations for Mitchell: desire to work on desktop, programming, GPU enabled

  • Idea: Terminals are conceptually like web browsers

    • Web browser = mainstream GUI ecosystem
    • There is a place for text based interfaces - terminal is the platform
      • Terminal could be an exciting if it gets more features

  • Terminal as a platform, terminal user interface (TUI)

    • Ask users what draws them to use a non-terminal applications
      • Examples:
        • Drag and drop files
        • Native tabs
        • Use native file explorer
        • Need browser, maybe TUI can have a browser widget

Ghostty vision: best terminal emulator experience because

Section titled “Ghostty vision: best terminal emulator experience because”
  • Fast
    • How fast text can go through terminal, example cat file, tail logs
    • How fast key press to terminal feedback / display
    • Frame rate, example scrolling
  • Cross platform
    • macOS: SwiftUI
      • Metal
    • Linux: GTK
      • OpenGL
    • Windows: in progress
  • Native
    • Instructions to make read/processing, rendering fast
  • Features
    • Ligature support
    • Support modern terminal features in version 1.0
    • Multiplexer support
      • Issue: tmux can conflict with terminal’s graphics protocols
      • Would be nice to have multiplexer features inside the terminal itself
        • Example: Host ghostty and connect in VPN like tailscale to other machines with sessions saved with terminal
    • Can reuse libghostty as UI integration, core
    • Look to cross platform web browsers for good features
    • Quick terminal (drop down terminal)
    • Terminal inspector
      • Will help people debug terminal applications

Discussion

Section titled “Discussion”
  • Discord and GitHub is active for a young project
    • Insight is many young people are interested in terminal
  • Project is discussing governance, project sustainability, financing (pay infrastructure, contributors)
  • Why Zig language?
    • Low level systems languages like C
      • Personal choice, had thought about rust
    • Community
    • No garbage collector
    • Zig contributions
      • Compiler contributions
      • Zig real world use case
  • Hard stuff?
    • Font rendering
  • Config
    • Config file naming and CLI argument keys are same names
      • File format is fast to parse
    • Constraints in software can be good
    • Defaults:
      • Font: Jetbrains Mono with emojis packaged

Install on Ubuntu Linux

Section titled “Install on Ubuntu Linux”

Arch Linux Distrobox as of 2025-01-11

Section titled “Arch Linux Distrobox as of 2025-01-11”
  • Use Distrobox and podman
  • Use archlinux:latest image from docker.io
  • Install ghostty with pacman
  • Expose ghostty to host
Terminal window
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install podman


# Set up distrobox for running ghostty
# Specify container repository
distrobox create -n arch --image docker.io/archlinux:latest
distrobox enter arch


sudo pacman -Syu ghostty --noconfirm


# Export ghostty for use on host
distrobox-export --app ghostty
# Exit container and run ghostty

When running ghostty inside the container, it will only have access to user’s programs local those in .local/bin and nix, but not those installed on host like apt programs.

Build from source using Nix as of 2024-12-28

Section titled “Build from source using Nix as of 2024-12-28”

  1. Nix-shell

    Terminal window
    nix-shell
    # Build binary to $HOME/.local/bin
    zig build -p $HOME/.local -Doptimize=ReleaseFast
    

    # Logout, then launch ghostty from app launcher
    

    ## Uninstall ghostty from zig build above
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/bin/ghostty
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/ghostty
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/state/ghostty
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/man/man1/ghostty.1
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/man/man5/ghostty.5
    rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/terminfo/ghostty.*
    ## Reboot or logout

  2. Nix only (has issues)

    Terminal window
    git clone https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git
    

    cd ghostty
    

    # Build using nix and enable experimental features
    nix build .#ghostty --extra-experimental-features 'nix-command flakes'
    ## Agree to prompts
    # Run ghostty
    ./result/bin/ghostty
    

    # If EGL problems, use nixGL - required for non-NixOS Ghostty
    # or home-manager installed ghostty
    # per https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL
    nix run --impure github:nix-community/nixGL --extra-experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' -- ./result/bin/ghostty