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Ghostty Devlog 002
10 hours ago
- Ghostty's non-tech updates include a public talk by Mitchell Hashimoto and community efforts to build a website, Discord, and beta waitlist.
- Ghostty will be free and open source, likely under GPLv3, with beta testers contributing to the license decision.
- Non-native fullscreen on macOS was implemented by Thorsten Ball, requiring a switch from SwiftUI to AppKit for window lifecycle management, improving the framework for future features.
- Blurry fonts and artifacts on Linux were traced to a padding calculation error involving float-to-int conversion, fixed by using integers for sizes and flooring padding values to ensure pixel-perfect rendering.
- The bug fix led to a codebase audit, revealing another rounding error, and emphasized using appropriate data types to prevent anti-aliasing issues.
Ghostty Devlog 003
10 hours ago
- Ghostty now has a public Discord server for community discussions and beta program expansion.
- A talk on Ghostty's implementation will be given at Zig Showtime on September 5th.
- Keyboard input handling is complex due to non-standard layouts, dead keys, and Unicode sequences; Ghostty now supports these cross-platform.
- Ghostty implements the Kitty Keyboard Protocol and xterm modified keys, enabling more keybindings in terminal programs.
- Linux/GTK improvements include single instance mode, primary clipboard support, automatic shell integration, and better keyboard layout handling.
- Ghostty is now a top-tier GTK Linux terminal, though still behind macOS, with thanks to beta testers for feedback.
Talk: Introducing Ghostty and Some Useful Zig Patterns
10 hours ago
- Ghostty is a new terminal emulator written in Zig, aiming to combine speed, feature richness, and native platform integration.
- The talk highlights Zig patterns used in Ghostty, including comptime interfaces, data tables, and type generation for zero-cost abstractions.
- Ghostty is currently in closed beta with source access, planned for free and open-source release under GPL (likely) in 2024.
- On macOS, Ghostty uses Swift for native UI (AppKit, SwiftUI), while Linux uses GTK, with the core logic in Zig.
- Key features: fast rendering (480-500 FPS in stress test), multiple font styles, splits, true color, Kitty graphics protocol, and native error messages.
- Future work includes GUI settings, iCloud sync, performance improvements, memory optimization, fuzzing, and expanding the beta program.
- The project aims to innovate terminal capabilities beyond traditional emulators, such as progress bars, drag-and-drop, and security features.
We Rewrote the Ghostty GTK Application
10 hours ago
- Ghostty's GTK application was rewritten to fully embrace GObject type system from Zig, leading to better feature richness, stability, and maintainability.
- The rewrite solved memory management bugs by wrapping Zig-owned Config structures in reference-counted GObjects, simplifying configuration reload and GUI updates.
- Valgrind was used extensively to verify every change, identifying memory leaks and undefined access, especially at C API boundaries.
- Zig's own codebase had only one leak and one undefined access, both at C API boundaries, highlighting Zig's memory safety features.
- The rewrite enabled use of modern GTK UI technologies like Blueprint, allowing easier addition of GUI features such as titlebar tabs and animated bell border.
- Valgrind caught subtle issues like improper GObject WeakRef clearing, which could cause rare crashes, emphasizing the need for tooling when crossing C APIs.
- The new GTK application is now the default build from source and will be included in Ghostty 1.2 release.
Ghostty Is Now Non-Profit
10 hours ago
- Ghostty is now a non-profit project fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) organization.
- Fiscal sponsorship allows Ghostty to operate under Hack Club's tax-exempt status, with Hack Club handling compliance, donations, accounting, and governance.
- The non-profit structure ensures Ghostty remains free and open source, prevents a 'rug pull', and legally binds the project to public-benefit purposes.
- Technically, nothing changes for Ghostty; the MIT license and project goals remain the same.
- Ghostty can now accept tax-deductible donations in the U.S., with plans to compensate contributors, support dependencies, and fund community events.
- All financial transactions are transparent via a public ledger on Hack Club Bank; applicable IP has been transferred to Hack Club.
- Mitchell Hashimoto remains project lead, with no personal benefit from donations; all funds go to the project and community.
- Hack Club receives 7% of donations to cover administrative costs, and Mitchell's family is donating $150,000 directly to Hack Club.
- Donations are encouraged to support Ghostty's sustainable development and open-source mission.
Finding and Fixing Ghostty's Largest Memory Leak
10 hours ago
- Ghostty had a major memory leak, causing up to 37 GB usage after 10 days of uptime.
- The leak was caused by a scrollback pruning optimization that reused non-standard pages without resizing the underlying memory allocation, leading to the memory never being freed.
- The fix never reuses non-standard pages during pruning; instead it destroys them properly and allocates a fresh standard-sized page from the pool.
- The leak was triggered by Claude Code's CLI, which produces many multi-codepoint grapheme outputs, forcing Ghostty to use non-standard pages frequently.
- The bug was identified using virtual memory tags on macOS, which made it easy to associate the leak with the PageList structure.
- Ghostty uses a PageList data structure with a memory pool for standard pages and mmap for non-standard pages; the leak occurred because the metadata incorrectly marked large pages as standard.
- A test has been added to reproduce the leak and prevent future regressions.
Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub
10 hours ago
- Mitchell Hashimoto, longtime GitHub user (since Feb 2008), announces Ghostty will leave GitHub due to frustration with frequent outages impacting work.
- He expresses deep emotional attachment to GitHub, having used it daily for over 18 years for work, hobby, and passion, including starting projects like Vagrant in hopes of joining GitHub.
- Despite love for the platform, he documents daily outages (e.g., Actions outages) that block productivity, making it 'no longer a place for serious work.'
- The decision to leave is based on real results needed for improvement, not promises; Ghostty will move to another provider (commercial or FOSS) incrementally while keeping a read-only mirror on GitHub.
- Personal projects and other work remain on GitHub for now; the focus is on Ghostty's community impact due to infrastructure dependencies like issues, PRs, and Actions.

Hasty Briefsbeta

ghostty

Ghostty Devlog 002

Ghostty Devlog 003

Talk: Introducing Ghostty and Some Useful Zig Patterns

We Rewrote the Ghostty GTK Application

Ghostty Is Now Non-Profit

Finding and Fixing Ghostty's Largest Memory Leak

Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub