ghostty-rs/docs/rewrite/ARCHITECTURE.md

Ghostty-rs Architecture

Rust rewrite of Ghostty 1.3.1. Reference source: ../ghostty/ (Zig), referred to below as ZIG/ (= ../../../ghostty).

Primary platform: Linux (GTK4 + libadwaita, OpenGL) — built, tested and verified at runtime here. Phase 8 extends the port to the rest of Ghostty's Zig code: the embedded libghostty C API (identical include/ghostty.h ABI, so Ghostty's unchanged Swift macOS app can link the Rust library), the libghostty-vt C API (include/ghostty/vt*.h), WASM (wasm32), macOS (Metal renderer, CoreText fonts, Darwin keymap/os) and Windows (ConPTY). Non-Linux targets are compile-checked (cargo check --target ...) on this machine; they cannot be run here. Phase 9 additionally ports the Swift macOS app (macos/) to Rust (crates/ghostty-macos, AppKit via objc2), compile-checked like the rest of the Apple code; the C ABI stays available for the original Swift app.

Top-down decomposition

ghostty (bin, src/main.rs)            CLI `+action` dispatch or GTK app startup
├── ghostty-cli                       `ghostty +action` commands
├── ghostty-apprt-gtk                 GTK4/libadwaita runtime: windows, tabs, splits,
│   │                                 dialogs, GLArea surfaces, IPC, inspector windows
│   └── ghostty-apprt                 core<->runtime contract (actions, messages, traits)
└── ghostty-core                      App + Surface: input routing, bindings, mouse,
    │                                 clipboard, config reload, per-surface threads
    ├── ghostty-termio                IO thread, pty, child process, stream handler
    │   └── ghostty-terminal          terminal state machine
    │       ├── Terminal / Screen     cursor, modes, scrolling, alt screen, selection
    │       ├── PageList / Page       scrollback memory model (slab nodes, tracked pins)
    │       ├── render / formatter    per-frame RenderState, text/VT/HTML export
    │       ├── kitty / search / tmux kitty graphics, search thread, tmux control mode
    │       └── ghostty-vt            byte stream -> Parser -> Stream -> Handler actions
    ├── ghostty-renderer              OpenGL renderer (glow), renderer thread, shaders
    │   └── ghostty-font              fontconfig/freetype/harfbuzz, sprite font, atlas
    ├── ghostty-inspector             Dear ImGui terminal inspector
    └── ghostty-config                config file/CLI parsing, themes, keybinds
        ├── ghostty-input             keys, key encoding, binding sets, mouse
        └── ghostty-os                XDG, env, shell, locale, resources dir, flatpak
Support: ghostty-unicode (width/grapheme/case-fold tables), ghostty-datastruct
(split tree, LRU, queues), ghostty-onig (Oniguruma retry-limit FFI),
ghostty-bench (benchmarks), ghostty-build-data (completions, man pages, syntax).

Crate map (workspace crates/)

Crate	Ports (ZIG/src/...)	Internal deps
ghostty-vt	terminal/Parser, parse_table, UTF8Decoder, osc.zig + osc/*, csi, dcs, apc, sgr, color, x11_color, charsets, modes, ansi, device_status, mouse_shape, kitty/{key,color,graphics_command}, tmux/control, stream.zig, simd (scalar)	–
ghostty-unicode	unicode/* (width, grapheme break, props, symbols) + case folding, generated from vendored UCD 17.0.0	–
ghostty-datastruct	datastruct/* (split_tree, lru, circ_buf, blocking_queue, cache_table, ...)	–
ghostty-onig	(Oniguruma whole-search retry limit used by StringMap.zig)	–
ghostty-os	os/* (xdg, homedir, shell, locale, passwd, env, open, desktop, resourcesdir, hostname, TempDir, uri, flatpak, systemd, cgroup, ...)	vt
ghostty-input	input/* (key, key_mods, keycodes, function_keys, key_encode, Binding, command, mouse, paste, kitty, Link)	vt, unicode
ghostty-terminal	terminal/ page, PageList, Screen, ScreenSet, Terminal, style, hyperlink, Tabstops, size, point, Selection, formatter, render, highlight, search/, kitty/graphics_, tmux/{layout,output,viewer}, stream_readonly, StringMap, ref_counted_set	vt, unicode, datastruct, onig
ghostty-config	config/*, cli/args.zig, cli/CommaSplitter.zig, cli/diagnostics.zig	input, os, terminal, vt
ghostty-font	font/* (Metrics, sprite/, Atlas, discovery (fontconfig), face (freetype), shaper (harfbuzz) + run, Collection, CodepointResolver, SharedGrid(Set), opentype/, nerd_font_attributes)	config, terminal, unicode, datastruct
ghostty-renderer	renderer/ generic, OpenGL + opengl/*, cell, cursor, image, link, size, State, Thread, Overlay, shadertoy, row, shaders/glsl	config, font, terminal, input, unicode, vt, datastruct
ghostty-inspector	inspector/* (Dear ImGui terminal inspector)	font, input, renderer, terminal, vt
ghostty-apprt	apprt/action.zig, structs.zig, surface.zig, ipc.zig, runtime traits	config, input, inspector, renderer, terminal, vt, datastruct
ghostty-termio	termio/, pty.zig, Command.zig, terminfo/, shell integration	apprt, config, os, renderer, terminal, vt, datastruct
ghostty-core	App.zig, Surface.zig, surface_mouse.zig, global.zig	apprt, config, font, input, inspector, os, renderer, terminal, termio, ...
ghostty-cli	cli/* actions, build_config.zig (build info)	apprt, config, font, input, os, vt
ghostty-apprt-gtk	apprt/gtk/* (+ ui/*.blp, css)	apprt, config, input, inspector, os, vt, datastruct
ghostty-bench	benchmark/, synthetic/	terminal, unicode, vt
ghostty-helpgen	helpgen.zig (build-time doc-comment extraction for CLI-action and keybind-action help; used from build.rs of ghostty-cli / ghostty-input)	–
ghostty-build-data	main_build_data.zig, extra/*, build/mdgen	cli, config, input, os, termio
root ghostty-rs (bin ghostty)	main_ghostty.zig	apprt, apprt-gtk, cli, config, core, os

Non-code: resources/ (shell-integration, themes, terminfo), dist/ (desktop integration), po/ (translations), crate-local res//shaders//resources/.

Build inputs: ghostty-build-info/build.rs derives version metadata from the workspace manifest and Git HEAD/refs, watching packed-refs only when it exists (packing loose refs also changes the watched refs directory). The GTK build script compiles resources/ in checkouts and watches the optional dist/ghostty.gresource bundle only when consuming it from a source tarball. Missing optional files must not be emitted as Cargo rerun-if-changed inputs: they invalidate every subsequent build and rebuild downstream crates. GTK invokes glib-compile-resources directly so generated XML/UI files in OUT_DIR are not watched as inputs; the resources/ watch covers their sources.

Key design decisions

1. Safe Rust by default. Workspace lint unsafe_code = "forbid". Crates that must do FFI/syscalls (renderer GL loader, termio pty/fork, apprt-gtk) may override with unsafe_code = "deny" and #[allow(unsafe_code)] on minimal, // SAFETY:-commented items. Prefer safe wrapper crates (rustix, glow, gtk4-rs) over raw FFI.
2. Pages without raw memory. Ghostty's page.zig packs a page into one mmap'd buffer with offsets. In Rust a Page owns Vec<Row> + Vec<Cell> (row-major, cols per row) plus per-page RefCountedSet<Style>, grapheme map HashMap<cell_index, Vec<u32>>, hyperlink set/map, string storage. Capacity accounting is preserved logically (styles, grapheme bytes, hyperlink bytes, string bytes, rows/cols), including Ghostty's byte-size layout formula (Page::layout(cap).total_size), because PageList pruning (scrollback-limit is in bytes), page splitting and capacity-adjust behaviour — and the tests for them — depend on it.
3. PageList as an index-based linked list. Nodes live in a slab (Vec<Option<Node>> + free list); NodeId is an index (+ generation for debug checks). Pin { node: NodeId, y, x, garbage } is Copy. Tracked pins live in a PageList-owned slab; holders keep a TrackedPin handle (index) and read/write through the PageList. All operations that move rows update tracked pins exactly like the Zig code.
4. Cell is a compact Copy value (target 8 bytes, bit-packed u64 with accessor methods mirroring Zig field names), so memory accounting and copying behaviour stay close to Ghostty.
5. Parser → Stream → Handler. ghostty-vt::Parser yields actions; ghostty-vt::stream::Stream<H: Handler> decodes CSI/ESC/OSC/DCS/APC into high-level actions and calls Handler. Terminal state changes live in ghostty-terminal (stream_readonly handler applies to Terminal), and ghostty-termio::StreamHandler handles side-effecting actions.
6. Rendering: OpenGL 4.3 via glow, inside a gtk::GLArea. Shaders are copied verbatim from ZIG/src/renderer/shaders/glsl. Renderer logic follows renderer/generic.zig (cell contents rebuilt from terminal::render::RenderState).
7. Fonts: fontconfig (discovery), freetype (rasterization), harfbuzz (shaping). Sprite font (box drawing etc.) is pure Rust, ported 1:1.
8. Threads: like Ghostty — per surface: IO thread (termio), renderer thread, plus a pty read thread. Mailboxes are crossbeam-channel / std::sync::mpsc; the GTK main thread is woken via glib channels. The Terminal is shared behind Arc<Mutex<..>> (Ghostty's renderer mutex).
9. Config: same file format, same keys, same defaults, same CLI flags, same docs text (used by +show-config --docs and --help).
10. Tests: every Zig test "..." block in a ported file is ported to a Rust #[test] with the same name (snake_cased) in the same module. scripts/test-progress.sh tracks counts.

Out of scope / deferred

• macOS (Swift app, Metal, CoreText), Windows, WASM, libghostty C API.
• (The ImGui inspector was deferred and is now ported: docs/rewrite/notes/ghostty-inspector.md.)

Scope changes

• 2026-10-12: Sentry crash handling and GTK<4.14/libadwaita<1.5 fallbacks, previously omitted, are ported in Phase 8 for full parity.
• 2026-10-12 (GC): the GTK/libadwaita compatibility fallbacks are ported (MessageDialog, SwitchRow-less clipboard template, pre-Banner debug warning and child-exited, GtkAboutDialog, CSS error source bytes, all blueprint variants in the gresource). Minimum versions: GTK 4.14, libadwaita 1.5 -- Ghostty's own floor (its build compiles every blueprint, incl. the 1.5/ ones, and calls gtk_css_provider_load_from_bytes (4.12) and gtk_im_context_activate_osk (4.14) unconditionally); the gnome_44 binding feature was dropped. Version gating mirrors Zig's atLeast (build level AND runtime): cargo features adw_1_3|1_4|1_5 and gtk_4_16 (all default) are the "header version"; building without them selects the Zig fallbacks at compile time. See notes/compat-GC.md.

Intentional omissions (decided by the orchestrator)

• Sentry crash reporting (crash/*): optional and disabled by default in upstream Linux builds; +crash-report listing is ported.