5 ms·

Ghostty 1.0 Is Coming

94 points by GhiGt 2y ago

lawn 2y ago
Finally. I've been idling in Discord a long time, failing to get into the private beta. I'm excited to try it out.
wkirby 2y ago
Excited for this. I’ve played around with iTerm alternatives but always came back because the replacements never felt native, which ultimately slowed down my workflow more than the speed boosts helped.
candrewlee14 2y ago
Ghostty has my daily driver for a good while now, I’ve been super happy with it. It’s been especially fun watching Mitchell deftly build a community at just the right speed for its development stage. Thank you for all your hard work and responsiveness.
rockorager 2y ago
I've been daily driving Ghostty for over a year now, and have been a somewhat regular contributor. As a TUI library author, I've worked with several terminal authors on bug fixes and implementing features - Mitchell is among the nicest to work with. Happy to see this project launch as 1.0!
AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
Can I click on paths to have them opened in my editor of choice? That's the killer feature that always brings me back to iTerm: clicking on paths in the output of various command line tools to directly jump to the line in e.g. source code.
- nine_k 2y ago
  How would it work under ssh?
  - AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
    iTerm runs a command with filename, line number, pwd etc. as parameters when you click a path. You can use so called shell extensions to let iTerm add hostname and user to those parameters. I usually grab those and point my editor to the appropriate share or sshfs mount. With vim you can seamlessly use rsync or scp.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
paranoidxprod 2y ago
Looking forward to this! Had been lurking in the discord for a while but never talked much so I never was able to get a beta key. The Terminal Inspector seems super cool and is what I'm most excited to try out. Seems like it'd be really useful for Bubble Tea [0] apps which I've been having run writing. [0] https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
Excited to try this! Hoping it is fairly low-configuration; a lot of the iTerm alternatives seem to require more configuration than I care to do in order to make them look halfway decent.
phkahler 2y ago
Can it connect to a serial port? I need a terminal to connect to a UART on embedded devices. This should be basic functionality on any terminal, but many don't seem to have it, they're just fancy local shells.
- themadsens 2y ago
  I connect to serial ports a lot in what I do, and never really understood why this should be handled by the terminal emulator. Much better done with eg. picocom, python serial.tools.miniterm or the like.
diimdeep 2y ago
Another ? Both Kitty and WezTerm already feel feel much faster than iTerm atm and feature complete.
- Pet_Ant 2y ago
  I mean it's by Mitchel Hashimoto of Vagrant/Terraform/Consul/Vault/Hashicorp fame so that makes it relevant in it's own right.
Ennea 2y ago
I'm missing WezTerm from that comparison image/slide posted in the article. Been using WezTerm for almost two years now I think, and I could not be happier. Best terminal emulator hands down.
- nine_k 2y ago
  I second this. WezTerm is very fast (much faster than anything libvterm-based), very featureful (comparable to Kitty), and very configurable (comparable to Vim, if not Emacs itself). Showing fonts the way I like (and not he way macOS defaults to): check. Sending complex key combos as custom sequences: check. Palettes, mouse support, system clipboard support: all check. Selection and search mode: check. Linux, MacOS, and even Windows support: all check! I wish Ghostty all the luck, because the current state of terminal emulators is a pretty high bar to clear.
- flexagoon 2y ago
  I've been using WezTerm for a while for the lack of a better alternative, but the current state of Wayland support in it is absolutely terrible. For example, I just changed my terminal font and I wasn't able to start WezTerm until I changed back to the previous font.
Kovah 2y ago
Can someone explain why iTerm is listed as "not fast" here? iTerm has been my primary terminal for over a decade and I keep coming back after trying alternatives like Warp, Hyper or Alacritty. And speed or snappy-ness were never an issue with iTerm.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Because iTerm is not fast. Try opening a fullscreen terminal and cat a long file. Add search / highlighting, repeat. Type something really fast; sometimes you can even notice the input lag, especially if you enable ligatures and other features. Install WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty; try the same. It's not that iTerm is not fast enough for most daily work. It's not that iTerm's feature set is not great. But there are faster alternatives, and in many cases, the difference is pronounced.
  - ktosobcy 2y ago
    > Type something really fast; I just opened iTerm and started bashing keys on my keyboard randomly and there wasn't any lag. For me, for all intents and purposed it just fast. Cat a long-ish (10k lines, I know it's not that log but don't have anything longer at hand) and search with highlight and there wasn't any lag (and I'm quite alergic to it). BUT. I don't have any fancy shell prompt nor ligatures (don't see any point) and there is a warning that enabling said ligatures will impact performance...
    - drcongo 2y ago
      I can't get it to go slow either, I have a fancy prompt (Starship) and nerdfonts.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      See e.g. https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/07/terminal-latency/ https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/07/terminal-latency/ On a slower machine, 100ms latency is achievable, which becomes perceptible (not yet annoying). Output speed can be visibility sluggish if you add too much highlighting and stuff. I haven't touched iTerm for several years; maybe the modern versions are intrinsically faster, and modern hardware is definitely much.faster, so this could have become imperceptible.
Pet_Ant 2y ago
How does this compare to Tera Term? I thought that was supposed to be the best terminal emulator? I just seen it mentioned in some PDP restoration videos.
tosh 2y ago
Amazing piece of software. Have been daily driving the current version of Ghostty for a few weeks on macOS. Kudos @ Mitchell
mrweasel 2y ago
Maybe I should try something different than just Terminal.app and Xterm.
darkweak 2y ago
Can't wait, thank you Ghislain for this news!!!
ktosobcy 2y ago
iTerm is slow? That's a new one for me...
- beej71 2y ago
  I feel like I'm missing something, too. I use iTerm and XFCE Terminal... Speed is something I never think about in my usage. I tried going back to Xterm just to see how blazingly fast it was and I couldn't really tell much difference. Maybe I'm just not attuned. :)
aidenn0 2y ago
If GTK+libadwaita is "native" for linux, then give me a custom UI. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and remember when every program rolled its own UI. It sucked, but modern GTK is in many ways worse.
thiht 2y ago
My number 1 issue with iTerm is that it doesn’t have a usable, plain text configuration format. I want to be able to configure my tools in plain text AND in a UI. iTerm forces me to use the UI (or import a config file, but it’s not very practical). Wezterm apparently uses Lua so it will likely never have a UI. I don’t understand why a config file would ever need programming constructs, give me JSON or YAML, not Lua. It sounds like Ghostty will scratch my itch.
- xintron 2y ago
  A good reason for Lua would be the example at the bottom of this page: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/launch.html#the-launcher-menu https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/launch.html#the-launch... Custom settings depending on the environment you're in, here setting up PowerShell on windows only. Allowing the same flexibility through JSON/YAML would not be as easy and simple.
  - thiht 2y ago
    I don't know, IMO it would be better solved by profiles, environment specific settings (eg. settings.json + settings.windows.json), or override keys, eg: { "font": "xxx", "[windows]": { // windows overrides "font": xxx } } I know using a full fledged programming language is infinitely more flexible, but I'm not sure a config needing infinite flexibility is a sign of good design. If they want to stick with Lua I think they should allow both: write your config in JSON for the 99% of config that is easy, and allow to modify and return an updated config in Lua. TBH I just downloaded Wezterm a few minutes ago and got bored just wanting to add a Cmd+K shortcut to clear the buffer.

94 points by GhiGt 2y ago

lawn 2y ago

Finally. I've been idling in Discord a long time, failing to get into the private beta. I'm excited to try it out.

Excited for this. I’ve played around with iTerm alternatives but always came back because the replacements never felt native, which ultimately slowed down my workflow more than the speed boosts helped.

candrewlee14 2y ago

Ghostty has my daily driver for a good while now, I’ve been super happy with it. It’s been especially fun watching Mitchell deftly build a community at just the right speed for its development stage. Thank you for all your hard work and responsiveness.

rockorager 2y ago

I've been daily driving Ghostty for over a year now, and have been a somewhat regular contributor. As a TUI library author, I've worked with several terminal authors on bug fixes and implementing features - Mitchell is among the nicest to work with. Happy to see this project launch as 1.0!

AnonymousPlanet 2y ago

Can I click on paths to have them opened in my editor of choice? That's the killer feature that always brings me back to iTerm: clicking on paths in the output of various command line tools to directly jump to the line in e.g. source code.

nine_k 2y ago
How would it work under ssh?
- AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
  iTerm runs a command with filename, line number, pwd etc. as parameters when you click a path. You can use so called shell extensions to let iTerm add hostname and user to those parameters. I usually grab those and point my editor to the appropriate share or sshfs mount. With vim you can seamlessly use rsync or scp.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

paranoidxprod 2y ago

Looking forward to this! Had been lurking in the discord for a while but never talked much so I never was able to get a beta key. The Terminal Inspector seems super cool and is what I'm most excited to try out. Seems like it'd be really useful for Bubble Tea [0] apps which I've been having run writing. [0] https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea

mattgreenrocks 2y ago

Excited to try this! Hoping it is fairly low-configuration; a lot of the iTerm alternatives seem to require more configuration than I care to do in order to make them look halfway decent.

phkahler 2y ago

Can it connect to a serial port? I need a terminal to connect to a UART on embedded devices. This should be basic functionality on any terminal, but many don't seem to have it, they're just fancy local shells.

themadsens 2y ago
I connect to serial ports a lot in what I do, and never really understood why this should be handled by the terminal emulator. Much better done with eg. picocom, python serial.tools.miniterm or the like.

diimdeep 2y ago

Another ? Both Kitty and WezTerm already feel feel much faster than iTerm atm and feature complete.

Pet_Ant 2y ago
I mean it's by Mitchel Hashimoto of Vagrant/Terraform/Consul/Vault/Hashicorp fame so that makes it relevant in it's own right.

Ennea 2y ago

I'm missing WezTerm from that comparison image/slide posted in the article. Been using WezTerm for almost two years now I think, and I could not be happier. Best terminal emulator hands down.

nine_k 2y ago
I second this. WezTerm is very fast (much faster than anything libvterm-based), very featureful (comparable to Kitty), and very configurable (comparable to Vim, if not Emacs itself). Showing fonts the way I like (and not he way macOS defaults to): check. Sending complex key combos as custom sequences: check. Palettes, mouse support, system clipboard support: all check. Selection and search mode: check. Linux, MacOS, and even Windows support: all check! I wish Ghostty all the luck, because the current state of terminal emulators is a pretty high bar to clear.
flexagoon 2y ago
I've been using WezTerm for a while for the lack of a better alternative, but the current state of Wayland support in it is absolutely terrible. For example, I just changed my terminal font and I wasn't able to start WezTerm until I changed back to the previous font.

Kovah 2y ago

Can someone explain why iTerm is listed as "not fast" here? iTerm has been my primary terminal for over a decade and I keep coming back after trying alternatives like Warp, Hyper or Alacritty. And speed or snappy-ness were never an issue with iTerm.

nine_k 2y ago
Because iTerm is not fast. Try opening a fullscreen terminal and cat a long file. Add search / highlighting, repeat. Type something really fast; sometimes you can even notice the input lag, especially if you enable ligatures and other features. Install WezTerm, Kitty, Alacritty; try the same. It's not that iTerm is not fast enough for most daily work. It's not that iTerm's feature set is not great. But there are faster alternatives, and in many cases, the difference is pronounced.
- ktosobcy 2y ago
  > Type something really fast; I just opened iTerm and started bashing keys on my keyboard randomly and there wasn't any lag. For me, for all intents and purposed it just fast. Cat a long-ish (10k lines, I know it's not that log but don't have anything longer at hand) and search with highlight and there wasn't any lag (and I'm quite alergic to it). BUT. I don't have any fancy shell prompt nor ligatures (don't see any point) and there is a warning that enabling said ligatures will impact performance...
  - drcongo 2y ago
    I can't get it to go slow either, I have a fancy prompt (Starship) and nerdfonts.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    See e.g. https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/07/terminal-latency/ https://www.lkhrs.com/blog/2022/07/terminal-latency/ On a slower machine, 100ms latency is achievable, which becomes perceptible (not yet annoying). Output speed can be visibility sluggish if you add too much highlighting and stuff. I haven't touched iTerm for several years; maybe the modern versions are intrinsically faster, and modern hardware is definitely much.faster, so this could have become imperceptible.

Pet_Ant 2y ago

How does this compare to Tera Term? I thought that was supposed to be the best terminal emulator? I just seen it mentioned in some PDP restoration videos.

tosh 2y ago

Amazing piece of software. Have been daily driving the current version of Ghostty for a few weeks on macOS. Kudos @ Mitchell

mrweasel 2y ago

Maybe I should try something different than just Terminal.app and Xterm.

darkweak 2y ago

Can't wait, thank you Ghislain for this news!!!

ktosobcy 2y ago

iTerm is slow? That's a new one for me...

beej71 2y ago
I feel like I'm missing something, too. I use iTerm and XFCE Terminal... Speed is something I never think about in my usage. I tried going back to Xterm just to see how blazingly fast it was and I couldn't really tell much difference. Maybe I'm just not attuned. :)

aidenn0 2y ago

If GTK+libadwaita is "native" for linux, then give me a custom UI. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and remember when every program rolled its own UI. It sucked, but modern GTK is in many ways worse.

thiht 2y ago

My number 1 issue with iTerm is that it doesn’t have a usable, plain text configuration format. I want to be able to configure my tools in plain text AND in a UI. iTerm forces me to use the UI (or import a config file, but it’s not very practical). Wezterm apparently uses Lua so it will likely never have a UI. I don’t understand why a config file would ever need programming constructs, give me JSON or YAML, not Lua. It sounds like Ghostty will scratch my itch.

xintron 2y ago
A good reason for Lua would be the example at the bottom of this page: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/launch.html#the-launcher-menu https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/launch.html#the-launch... Custom settings depending on the environment you're in, here setting up PowerShell on windows only. Allowing the same flexibility through JSON/YAML would not be as easy and simple.
- thiht 2y ago
  I don't know, IMO it would be better solved by profiles, environment specific settings (eg. settings.json + settings.windows.json), or override keys, eg: { "font": "xxx", "[windows]": { // windows overrides "font": xxx } } I know using a full fledged programming language is infinitely more flexible, but I'm not sure a config needing infinite flexibility is a sign of good design. If they want to stick with Lua I think they should allow both: write your config in JSON for the 99% of config that is easy, and allow to modify and return an updated config in Lua. TBH I just downloaded Wezterm a few minutes ago and got bored just wanting to add a Cmd+K shortcut to clear the buffer.