First cut of the terminal core memory model from ZIG/src/terminal:
size, point, style, hyperlink, ref_counted_set, page and PageList.
Design (see docs/rewrite/ARCHITECTURE.md decisions 2-4):
- Cell/Row are 8-byte u64 wrappers with Zig's exact bit offsets.
- Page owns row/cell Vecs plus style set, grapheme and hyperlink maps;
Page::layout reproduces Ghostty's byte-size formula on 64-bit Linux so
scrollback-limit pruning matches.
- PageList keeps nodes in a generation-checked slab with a free list and
list-owned tracked pins addressed by handles.
This is explicitly partial (docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-terminal-
pagelist.md): 151/202 PageList tests ported; reflow rebuilds a snapshot
instead of Zig's incremental ReflowCursor; point<->pin conversion walks
from the list head (no active/viewport caches); RefCountedSet doesn't
reproduce probe-dependent ID reuse. A follow-up pass finishes parity.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-terminal (239 tests)
Ports the parts of Ghostty's IO layer that don't depend on the terminal:
- pty.zig: pty pair, window size, mode, child-side setsid/TIOCSCTTY;
master is CLOEXEC with IUTF8 set
- Command.zig: fork/execvpe with Ghostty's exact child setup (stdio
dup2, best-effort chdir, rlimit restore, os/runtime pre-exec hooks,
cgroup handling) and exit status decoding
- shell_integration.zig for bash/zsh/fish/elvish/nushell plus feature
flags; scripts copied verbatim to resources/shell-integration/
- terminfo generator for xterm-ghostty, byte-identical to Zig's encode
output (golden file produced with the real Zig code)
This crate opts into unsafe_code = "deny" (fork/exec need it) with
allow + SAFETY comments on minimal items.
Integration left: config-derived option types are local stand-ins;
cgroup D-Bus scope creation is a closure hook; Exec/Termio/Thread/
stream_handler wait for ghostty-terminal. Pty now closes both fds on
drop (Zig never auto-closed the slave) - to re-check when wiring Exec.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-termio (52 tests, incl. real pty spawn test
expecting "hi\r\n31 97\r\n" from `echo hi; stty size`)
Ports ZIG/src/config (minus C/WASM APIs) and cli/{args,CommaSplitter,
diagnostics}.zig into ghostty-config:
- all 202 options with exact names, types, defaults and verbatim docs,
declared through one config_struct! macro; Zig's comptime reflection is
replaced by the ConfigField/CliTarget traits
- loading: default XDG files, -e, config-file includes (optional '?',
cycle detection), themes incl. light:/dark: pairs, conditional config,
replay, finalize() derived defaults, clone/changed diffing for reload
- Linux/GTK default keybinds built on ghostty_input::binding::Set
- formatter producing +show-config output
Verified against the installed Ghostty 1.3.1: `+show-config --default`
and `--default --docs` match byte for byte (except gtk-opengl-debug,
which differs between debug/release builds), as do two complex loaded
configs.
Open items (docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-config.md): url regex needs an
Oniguruma-compatible engine (onig) in the renderer; some font/terminal
types are local copies awaiting integration; KeyRemapSet equality is
order sensitive unlike Zig.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-config (255 tests)
- compare `ghostty +show-config --default --docs` with our formatter
Ports ZIG/src/terminal/stream.zig: the Stream feeds bytes through the
UTF-8 decoder and parser and dispatches every CSI/ESC/OSC/DCS/APC and
C0/C1 control to a Handler as a high-level Action (all 95 Zig
variants). Zig's comptime handler interface becomes a Handler trait with
an associated error type, a required vt() and an optional vt_raw() hook.
Performance: next_slice() processes 4 KiB chunks, finds ESC with memchr
and decodes printable runs in bulk (scalar port of ZIG/src/simd's
index_of / utf8_decode_until_control_seq), plus the CSI parameter fast
path.
Terminals must construct the stream with Stream::new_alloc so the OSC
parser accepts allocating commands (colors, OSC 133), as in Zig.
Minor differences: after a stray UTF-8 byte the rest of the chunk
returns to the fast path, and a spurious Zig warning after CSI 2/5 W is
dropped.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-vt (448 passed; 37/38 stream tests ported,
the skipped one only exercises the C ABI)
Ports ZIG/src/input (except macOS keymaps) into ghostty-input:
- key, key_mods (incl. RemapSet), the physical keycode table
- key_encode: legacy, modifyOtherKeys and kitty keyboard protocol
encoders, function key tables
- Binding: all keybinding actions with their user-visible docs (for
+list-actions), triggers, sets with sequences, chains, leader keys and
key tables, and formatting back to config strings
- command palette defaults, mouse, paste safety checks, kitty helpers,
links, helpgen action docs
Deviations (docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-input.md): Mods.super is named
super_; case folding uses char::to_lowercase plus Ghostty's special
cases instead of uucode tables; chain parents are trigger paths instead
of pointers; a Zig bug where chained leaves inside sequences corrupted the
shared prefix when formatting is fixed (covered by a test).
Integration left: building encode/paste Options from terminal modes,
and implementing the EntryFormatter trait in ghostty-config.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-input (220 tests; 8 macOS-only skipped)
- cargo clippy -p ghostty-input --all-targets -- -D warnings
ghostty-unicode: Ghostty computes codepoint properties with the uucode
Zig package (v0.2.0, Unicode 17.0.0). There is no Rust equivalent, so
a trimmed UCD set is vendored in ucd/ and build.rs re-implements
uucode's derivations: cell width rules incl. Ghostty's overrides for
emoji modifiers and Prepend, grapheme break classes with the
compile-time grapheme_break state table, the is_symbol set, and emoji
presentation. Lookups are three array indexes per codepoint. Validated
against the official GraphemeBreakTest.txt.
ghostty-datastruct: split_tree (used for GTK splits; f16 ratios so
rounding and debug diagrams match Zig), circ_buf, lru, cache_table,
blocking_queue, segmented_pool, message_data, comparison,
array_list_collection. intrusive_linked_list is not needed (lru is
index based). lru now reports the evicted (old) key, Zig reported the
new key, which appears to be a bug.
Not yet covered: case_folding_full (needed by input bindings).
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-unicode (16) -p ghostty-datastruct (88)
- cargo clippy for both crates with -D warnings
Ports ZIG/src/os for Linux into ghostty-os: XDG dirs, home dir, hostname,
env/PATH helpers, passwd lookup (via nix), shell detection, resources
dir discovery, string encodings (printf-q, URL percent), systemd
sd_notify, i18n via gettextrs, xdg-open, desktop/cgroup/kernel info,
temp dirs, URI parsing (port of std.Uri incl. Ghostty's extra options),
and a zbus-based Flatpak HostCommand implementation.
The crate stays free of unsafe. Consequences, all tracked as
TODO(integration) in docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-os.md:
- locale::ensure_locale is a no-op (setlocale/setenv are unsafe; GTK
calls setlocale itself); setenv/unsetenv are not exposed.
- passwd's Flatpak branch needs the termio pty and falls back to the
sandbox entry for now.
- FlatpakHostCommand's D-Bus path is untested (no portal here).
Intentional fix: a leading '@' in NOTIFY_SOCKET is treated as an
abstract socket.
macOS/Windows/WASM modules are out of scope.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-os (88 tests)
- cargo clippy -p ghostty-os --all-targets -- -D warnings
Ports ZIG/src/font/{Metrics,Atlas,Glyph}.zig and the whole sprite font
(font/sprite/**): box drawing, block elements, braille, branch/git
graph symbols, geometric shapes, powerline, and the symbols for legacy
computing (+ supplement, incl. the octants table).
Ghostty draws sprites with z2d; we use tiny-skia for path coverage,
composited onto an alpha8 canvas, while following the Zig geometry
(positions, thickness, rounding). Comptime discovery of draw functions
is replaced by explicit, overlap-checked codepoint range tables.
Upstream reference sheets are vendored in testdata/ and compared with a
tolerance: braille and U+1CD00 are pixel-identical; other sheets differ
only in antialiasing on thin diagonals/curves. Review renders are written
to target/sprite_sheets/.
The crate temporarily drops its config/unicode/terminal deps until the
rest of the font engine is ported (Phase 3).
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-font (49 tests incl. reference sheet comparison)
- inspect target/sprite_sheets/review-all-18x36.png
Ports the parsing half of ZIG/src/terminal into the ghostty-vt crate:
- Parser state machine with a compile-time generated parse table and
the UTF-8 decoder
- OSC parser incl. all sub-parsers (titles, colors, clipboard, hyperlinks,
semantic prompts/OSC 133, OSC 9 / ConEmu, iTerm2, kitty clipboard,
color and text-sizing protocols, context signals)
- CSI, SGR, modes table with save/restore, charsets, ansi, device status,
mouse shapes, APC, DCS (incl. XTGETTCAP), tmux control-mode parser
- color palette / X11 color names, kitty color and graphics command parser
Deviations from Zig (documented in docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-vt-W*.md):
parser actions own their payloads instead of borrowing parser buffers;
OSC strings are Vec<u8>; non-exhaustive Zig enums gain an Other(raw)
variant; tmux regexes replaced by equivalent hand-written matchers.
Known follow-up: semantic_prompt.rs carries local copies of the printf-q
and percent decoders that belong in ghostty-os.
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-vt: 395 passed, 1 ignored (skipped in Zig too)
- cargo clippy -p ghostty-vt --all-targets -- -D warnings: clean
Start of the full Rust rewrite of Ghostty 1.3.1 (reference source in
../ghostty). Sets up a workspace whose crates mirror Ghostty's Zig modules
(vt, unicode, datastruct, os, input, config, terminal, font, renderer,
termio, core, apprt-gtk) so porting work can proceed in parallel per crate.
Also adds:
- docs/rewrite/{ARCHITECTURE,PLAN,STATUS,AGENT_GUIDE}.md: crate map, core
design decisions (safe Rust, slab-based PageList, logical capacity
accounting), phased plan, progress tracker, and porting rules.
- Workspace clippy config relaxing pedantic lints that are pure noise for
low-level terminal code (casts, long functions).
- Shared vt types needed by several work packages up front: kitty
keyboard flags (kitty/key.rs) and the CSI separator bitset (SepList).
Test Plan:
- cargo test -p ghostty-vt (3 tests pass)
- cargo clippy -p ghostty-vt --all-targets -- -D warnings
ddidderr