Ghostling

https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostling

by bjornroberg • 4 months ago

333 70 4 months ago

vintagedave3• 4 months ago

The C file is small enough to read (over a few minutes.)

I got to about line 5 and realized: I’ve never seen quite that technique for embedding a font via an autogenerated header before. I’m more used to Windows resources; this seems to generate a byte array in CMake code. I’m somewhere between horrified and impressed, in that I feel we’ve finally discovered a cross platform binary resource embedding solution.

vintagedave3• 4 months ago

And as a Windows programmer the use of a method called DrawTextEx surprised me :)

A really neat sample. Shows the power of the ghosttty library very well. The author chose well with their other libraries, it’s the kind of demo that lets the code actually demo what to trying to without much else getting in the way. Rather inspirational to wrote my own terminal app now.

fresh_broccoli• 4 months ago

Fun fact: XPM bitmaps were designed to be #included unmodified, the files contain C boilerplate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_PixMap

simonw• 4 months ago

Here's the build script that uses: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostling/blob/main/bin2heade...

I ran it against a 1x1 pixel GIF:

  cmake -DINPUT=pixel.gif -DOUTPUT=pixel.h -DARRAY_NAME=pixel_gif -P bin2header.cmake

And got this:

  // Auto-generated from /private/tmp/exp/pixel.gif — do not edit.
  static const unsigned char pixel_gif[] = {
      0x47, 0x49, 0x46, 0x38, 0x39, 0x61, 0x01, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x80, 0x00, 
      0x00, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x2c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
      0x01, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x02, 0x44, 0x01, 0x00, 0x3b
  };

flohofwoe• 4 months ago

Interestingly, cmake 4.3 just added a builtin command 'bin2c':

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v4.3/manual/cmake.1.html#cmdopt...

...it will probably take a decade or two until Debian-based Linux distros will get cmake 4.3 though ;)

kingforaday• 4 months ago

For cross-compilation ease it makes sense if you don't care about the size explosion.

electroly• 4 months ago

You can use `xxd` from the vim package to generate these. You'll find out pretty quickly that this is only suitable for small resources: gcc and clang blow up in both time and space on very large literal arrays. If you need to ship more than a few megabytes, find a different technique.

I used this technique for awhile, but it was too problematic for my use case. Now, I use https://github.com/lief-project/LIEF -- among other things, this project can modify Windows PE, macOS Mach-O, and Linux ELF binaries to add resources to them, then offers an API to read them back later. It's a little different for each format, but it's capable of doing all three and I was able to build a cross-platform resource-bundling system that doesn't care how big the resources are.

rweichler2• 4 months ago

Yeah xxd is the correct answer. If you don't want to install a dependency and have Lua installed, or if you're just feeling a little bit frisky, you can use my function which is Production Ready™.

    Xxd = function(name, input)
        if not name:find'^[_%a][_%w]*$' then error('bad name: '..tostring(name)) end
        local ans = {
            'const unsigned int '..name..'_len = '..(#input)..';',
            'const unsigned char '..name..'[] = {',
        }
        local t = {}
        for i=1,#input do
            table.insert(t, ('0x%02x,'):format(input:byte(i)))
            if #t == 16 then -- 16 columns per row. arbitrary, change this if you want
                table.insert(ans, table.concat(t))
                t = {}
            end
        end
        if #t ~= 0 then
            table.insert(ans, table.concat(t))
        end
        table.insert(ans, '};\n')
        return table.concat(ans, '\n')
    end

I am distributing it under the terms of the GNU GPL v3. So if you put this in your codebase I will sue you into releasing your entire source. Just kidding it's MIT licensed.

Honestly that's a terrible joke. Seriously it's MIT. Here I will put the full license in this comment to illustrate how serious I am:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

TacticalCoder• 4 months ago

I’m somewhere between horrified and impressed, in that I feel we’ve finally discovered a cross platform binary resource embedding solution.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment about having "finally discovered" that...

For to me embedding binary resources in source files is nothing new at all? It was definitely done in the early JavaScript days for a variety of reasons.

Arguably early basic listings that had lots of DATA text lines were already doing that. Maybe not the most portable but we're talking about the 70s and 80s here and definitely binary data in source code.

Games for the Atari ST and Amiga, for example, could partially share at least some of their source code and it wasn't uncommon to encode binary inside sources, including... Fonts! Back then fonts were not reused from one game to another.

Heck, I've done in Java (and Java is cross platform) in the past: quick visual debug tools for Java GUI apps to toggle a debug mode showing something not dissimilar to a HUD. Pixel-perfect fonts encoded in .java source files.

I really don't think it's anything new.

P.S: I'm pretty sure it's done like for some fonts in the Linux kernel too.

jrmg• 4 months ago

`man xxd`

vintagedave3• 4 months ago

"Finally discovered" was more that there are so many difference ways, all of which work differently. Maybe this is just adding one more technique, xkcd-style, but it struck me as more possibly cross-platform-identical than several techniques I've seen. If you embed Windows resources, for example, that's highly Windows-specific; this one would work regardless.

mitchellh• 4 months ago

Well, I originally used C23's #embed directive (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/preprocessor/embed) but GCC in Nixpkgs doesn't support C23 (or I'm holding it wrong) so I dropped back to this. The better long term solution is #embed.

poly2it• 4 months ago

I've definitely used C23 via Nixpkgs long ago at this point, did you use the `gcc` package and `-std=c23`? Both unstable and 25.11 should support it on all currently packaged GCC versions.

conradev• 4 months ago

I think this has been around for a while:

  $ echo 'test' | xxd -i -n foo
  unsigned char foo[] = {
    0x74, 0x65, 0x73, 0x74, 0x0a
  };
  unsigned int foo_len = 5;

(edit: 30 years)

w4rh4wk5• 4 months ago

For completeness, there's also the somewhat common way of creating an object file directly from the binary using objcopy. The object file ends up with 3 symbols with names based on the input file. For instance, a binary file level0.map yields: _binary_level0_map_start, _binary_level0_map_end, _binary_level0_map_size.

These can be used in the application through external declarations; and you include the object file in the linking step, like any other object file.

gucci-on-fleek• 4 months ago

My preferred technique (where #embed isn't available) is to use objcopy:

  $ echo 'Hello, world!' > hello-world.txt 
  $ objcopy --input-target=binary --output-target=elf64-x86-64 \
      hello-world.txt hello-world.o
  $ cat <<EOF > embed.c
      #include <stdint.h>
      #include <stdio.h>
  
      #define EMBED(NAME)                                \
          extern const uint8_t _binary_##NAME##_start[]; \
          extern const uint8_t _binary_##NAME##_size[];
      #define DATA(NAME) _binary_##NAME##_start
      #define SIZE(NAME) (size_t)_binary_##NAME##_size
  
      int main() {
          EMBED(hello_world_txt);
  
          printf("%.*s", (int)SIZE(hello_world_txt), DATA(hello_world_txt));
      }
  EOF
  $ gcc hello-world.o embed.c -o hello-world
  $ ./hello-world
  Hello, world!

oDot2• 4 months ago

I use libghostty for Trolley[0], which packages TUIs as desktop apps, like Electron does for web apps.

It really is quite an amazing piece of software. I just wrapped it in a useful GUI and a bundle/package CLI and it just works. Even on Windows. Kudos to the Ghostty developers.

[0] https://github.com/weedonandscott/trolley

nout2• 4 months ago

I think your github readme is really missing a picture/screenshot to quickly understand what is the experience like. I.e. if your app is mainly about adding the chrome (as in the surrounding UI pixels) around the TUI, then it would be good to show what is the chrome like.

cstrahan• 4 months ago

Nah, I think it’s pretty clear. It would look like a terminal emulator. Just like how Electron looks like a bunch of browser widgets - because it’s literally a single-web-app browser.

theowaway2134562• 4 months ago

This is a pretty cool idea. Kind of a neat distribution hack if all you have is a TUI (and not a full GUI). Curious whether you know of any success stories yet

oDot2• 4 months ago

Thanks.

This was written for my own screenwriting software, which is now in private alpha. It works quite nicely for an alpha

https://blisswriter.app

girvo• 4 months ago

I kind of want to use this to turn Wordgrinder into a Mac app haha

Imustaskforhelp• 4 months ago

Oh this is nice!

You mention that Android/IOS support is possible. I hope that you can please add these support properly as your project matures.

Asking this because I would love to have a cli tool where I can just point to for example golang codebase from any device (mac/windows/linux) etc. and thanks to golang's cross compilation simplicity, have it be compiled for android (well linux arm fwiw) and then have it all be compiled into a single android apk.

And if you do that, I would love to have something like zenity but for android so as to abstract the cli behind a nice gui for mass-adoption.

This is almost a million dollar problem as there are so many good cli tools and its incredibly easy and versatile to make a gui even with scripts on top of that cli but Android/Ios usually don't have that versatility.

imiric• 4 months ago

This looks interesting.

I don't need my terminal emulator to support tabs, windows, or session management. My WM manages tabs and windows, and I use tmux for sessions, which also gives me a scrollback buffer, selection, clipboard, search, etc. This combination allows me to use any simple terminal emulator, such as urxvt, st, and now foot, without issues.

Ghostty didn't appeal to me, but I might give this a try. It's good that OSC support is planned. A plugin-like system, similar to st's but less cumbersome, would be nice to have.

nixpulvis2• 4 months ago

It's comical how much time I've spent convincing people that tabs are a window manager feature not an application feature. People in the Alacritty issue on the subject were pissed!

theowaway2134562• 4 months ago

Are there any good, non-tiling window managers that support tabs? (I struggle with tiling ones like i3 because I am a small-brained mouse user)

eddythompson802• 4 months ago

Yes, we need tabs for RDR2 and Spotify.

hombre_fatal9• 4 months ago

I've heard this a lot on HN over the years but it doesn't make much sense to me. Some thoughts:

1. App tabs improves UX for 99.999% of users who aren't using a WM with a good tab solution (if one even exists).

2. WM tabs means launching a new app instance for every tab you might want vs having lightweight app tabs.

3. App tabs can do all sorts of app-level things and UX polish that dumb WM tabs can't do because they are so general. My terminal emulator tabs show a badge count of bell notifications, can be dragged around into groups, or dragging into other tabs as split panes. My browser tabs show you which tab is playing music and can impl right click -> mute.

4. I bet even the biggest WM tab cheerleader still uses browser tabs.

5. WM tabs are a different concern than app tabs, not a replacement. WM tabs are useful when you want tabs and the app doesn't provide a good tab metaphor or when you want to tile/group app instances a certain way. That doesn't mean it's not useful for the app instances themselves to have app tabs when it makes sense.

rane• 4 months ago

I like to manage tabs and windows through tmux and it suits my workflow very well. What are you going to do now?

herewulf• 4 months ago

On tiling WMs I use rxvt-unicode with no window decorations, no gaps, 1 px border, no scrollbar. Then tmux does the rest, namely tabs and splits. Automatic session saving has been a life saver on more than one occasion.

qudat• 4 months ago

Interesting you mention tmux because it itself resembles a terminal emulator. It has its own terminal feature matrix that controls what your parent emulator can render. It sounds like you aren’t using tabs and splits in tmux but it does include them.

It sounds like you could get away with using a tool like https://zmx.sh which only handles session persistence (attach/detach). It also uses libghostty but only for state restoration on reattach.

mikabasketball• 4 months ago

A poor man's version of session persistence can even be managed with tmux plugins like tmux-resurrect and tmux-continuum.

lzhgusapp• 4 months ago

I switched to Ghostty a few months ago and it's become one of the apps I never close. The rendering speed is noticeably better than iTerm2, especially with large log outputs. Excited to see libghostty enabling projects like this — the idea of packaging TUIs as native desktop apps is really compelling for indie developers.

lindskogen• 4 months ago

I have an idea of a terminal emulator where you could maximize panes but using a nested structure, does anyone know of one?

Standard "Zoom" features in tmux or iTerm2 only maximize the single active pane to the full window, hiding everything else. If I have a layout like this:

  _____________________
  |         |    B    |
  |    A    |---------|
  |         |    C    |
  |_________|_________|

And I expand B, I want A to hide, while B and C remain visible together. Then I can create a new nested workspace in there and later zoom out when I’m done.

Maybe this could be done arbitrarily deep?

aquariusDue• 4 months ago

It's not really what you want but in a similar vein check out: zoom.el

https://github.com/cyrus-and/zoom

I guess it's also the kind of thing where screen real-estate is a must otherwise when you're at the "top-level" it would look weird-ish.

0x696C6961• 4 months ago

You can do this with i3

ramon156• 4 months ago

Wouldn't you want a hide option rather than a fullscreen option? so hide A?

When I use zellij, i just move A to a new tab temporarily

hombre_fatal9• 4 months ago

This should be simple any time you have panes in a binary tree split view.

The hard part is the UX: making it clear that we're in a zoom state (esp with nested zooms), somehow showing the split-pane tree so that user knows what container will be filled when they zoom, etc.

Fork ghostty and get claude to one-shot it so you can see if you like the idea.

znpy• 4 months ago

I’m seriously interested in this. I wonder if i can use this along some decent gui library and an llm to vibe-code a SecureCRT replacement.

SecureCRT is awesome but it’s crazy expensive :(

thiht• 4 months ago

I really hope libghostty succeeds at setting a new baseline for what terminal emulation should be. Seems to be on a right track.

CraigJPerry• 4 months ago

I used ghostty for the shell in my agent-manager tool (think something like https://air.dev/ but in SwiftUI. One architectural detail i'm still going back and forth on is: who should own the PTY?

If embedded Ghostty owns it, now i have to have some kind of workaround to instrument what's happening inside the terminal - signals, stdout/stderr events, return code etc.

If my parent agent-manager app owns it, now i don't have the nice clean small interface to ghostty (i'm a fan of John Ousterhout style narrow but deep interfaces, pulling complexity down rather than pushing up to parent).

Not sure if any other ghostty embedders might have advice. It's on my todo list to task a an agent to "gh repo clone" a few ghostty using shells and report on their arch.

willrshansen• 4 months ago

Sounds like you need to multiplex a terminal with a terminal multiplexer.

terminal multiplexer

term mux

tmux

delduca• 4 months ago

I have plans to add it to my game (SDL).

hombre_fatal9• 4 months ago

I built my own macOS terminal app over the last two weeks using swift/appkit + ghostty's zig library.

I basically just wanted vertical tabs and notifications for when AI agents (claude code, codex) are finished.

I already use it as my main terminal over iTerm.

It's a fun project since I use my terminal all day, so I always have ideas for how something could be improved or polished. AI can do the chore work of figuring out how to impl some bugfix or UX polish, and I manage the last 10%.

This would have been too much work to maintain for fun before LLMs.

vunderba4• 4 months ago

FWIW most of the agentic CLI tools also let you setup notification hooks so you can just do something like this:

  afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Glass.aiff                                                    
  osascript -e 'display notification "Waiting..." with title "Coding Agent"

The sound is especially useful since for longer running tasks I'll often do some chores around the house while waiting for it to finish up.

hombre_fatal9• 4 months ago

My notification hook pipes an OSC 777 (title, body) message into /dev/tty, Ghostty handles/ingests it and then emits the event for my terminal app to do things like craft a macOS notif and style the tab/pane of the originating terminal.

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    MSG=$(cat | jq -r '.last_assistant_message // empty' | head -c 200)
    printf '\e]777;notify;Claude Code;%s\a' "${MSG:-Claude finished responding}" > /dev/tty

I tried the osascript solution first but had some issues, iirc no good way to focus the originating terminal pane on notif click.

Something I never figured out is why Claude Code's "Notification" hook waits minutes to fire. I had to use the "Stop" hook for actual end-of-response timing.

isjdiwjxiwj• 4 months ago

I hardly think you can say YOU built it went all your did was manage 10% of the project. An LLM built it, you just test it.

hombre_fatal9• 4 months ago

Figuring out what to build, how it should work at a high level, and what it should be like to use it is the hard part and the defining aspect of any tool or application. (Or a fun game, for example)

Now that the cost of writing code is ~$0, I think the entity who figures that out is the one who built it, not the entity that does the trivial chore once the hard decisions have already been made.

echelon• 4 months ago

I love seeing an `AGENTS.md` in open source projects.

It's now my #1 heuristic to know if the team is on the right track.

(I need to start adding them to all my projects.)

octetta• 4 months ago

This is amazing and might be exactly what I’m looking for my own weirdo retro tooling that sometimes needs to run over ssh but also expect a “GUI” experience… any metrics on the overhead this might add to, for instance to a hello world type program?

Ghostling

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