Mitchell Hashimoto efc1ceab5d macOS: New value-based split tree implementation, move split logic out of SwiftUI into AppKit (#7523)
This is a major rework of how we represent, handle, and render splits in
the macOS app.

This new PR moves the split structure into a dedicated, generic
(non-Ghostty-specific) value-type called `SplitTree<V>`. All logic
associated with splits (new split, close split, move split, etc.) is now
handled by notifications on `BaseTerminalController`. The view hierarchy
is still SwiftUI but it has no logic associated with it anymore and
purely renders a static tree of splits.

Previously, the split hierarchy was owned by AppKit in a type called
`SplitNode` (a recursive class that contained the tree structure). All
logic around creating, zooming, etc. splits was handled by notification
listeners directly within the SwiftUI hierarchy. SwiftUI managed a
significant amount of state and we heavily used bindings, publishers,
and more. The reasoning for this is mostly historical: splits date back
to when Ghostty tried to go all-in on SwiftUI. Since then, we've taken a
more balanced approach of SwiftUI for views and AppKit for data and
business logic, and this has proven a lot more maintainable.

## Spatial Navigation

Previously, focus moving was handled by traversing the tree structure.
This led to some awkward behaviors. See:
https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/issues/524#issuecomment-2668396095

In this PR, we now handle focus moving spatially. This means that move
"left" means moving to the visually left split (from the top-left
corner, a future improvement would be to do it from the cursor
position).

Concretely, given the following split structure:

```
+----------+-----+
|          |  b  |
|          |     |
|   a      +-----+
|          |     |
|          |     |
|          |     |
|          |     |
|----------|  d  |
|   c      |     |
|          |     |
+----------+-----+
```

Moving "right" from `c` now moves to `d`. Previously, it would go to
`b`. On Linux, it still goes to `b`.

## Value Types

One of the major architectural shifts is moving **purely to immutable
value types.** Whenever a split property changes such as a new split,
the ratio between splits, zoomed state, etc. we _create an entirely new
`SplitTree` value_ and replace it along the entire view hierarchy. This
is in some ways wasteful, but split hierarchies are relatively small
(even the largest I've seen in practical use are dozens of splits, which
is small for a computer). And using value types lets us get rid of a ton
of change notification soup around the SwiftUI hierarchy. We can rely on
reference counting to properly clean up our closed views.

> [!NOTE]
> 
> As an aside, I think value types are going to make it a lot easier in
the future to implement features like "undo close." We can just keep a
trailing list of surface tree states and just restore them. This PR
doesn't do anything like that, but it's now possible.

## SwiftUI Simplicity

Our SwiftUI view hierarchy is dramatically simplified. See the
difference in `TerminalSplitTreeView` (new) vs `TerminalSplit` (old).
There's so much less logic in our new views (almost none!). All of it is
in the AppKit layer which is just way nicer.

## AI Notes

This PR was heavily written by AI. I reviewed every line of code that
was rewritten, and I did manually rewrite at every step of the way in
minor ways. But it was very much written in concert. Each commit usually
started as an AI agent writing the whole commit, then nudging to get
cleaned up in the right way.

One thing I found in this task was that until the last commit, I kept
the entire previous implementation around and compiling. The agent
having access to a previous working version of code during a refactor
made the code it produced as follow up in the new architecture
significantly better, despite the new architecture having major
fundamental differences in how it works!
2025-06-05 12:59:43 -07:00
..