mirror of https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git synced 2025-07-14 15:56:13 +03:00

Mitchell Hashimoto fb9c52ecf4 Nuke GLFW from Orbit

This deletes the GLFW apprt from the Ghostty codebase.

The GLFW apprt was the original apprt used by Ghostty (well, before
Ghostty even had the concept of an "apprt" -- it was all just a single
application then). It let me iterate on the core terminal features,
rendering, etc. without bothering about the UI. It was a good way to get
started. But it has long since outlived its usefulness.

We've had a stable GTK apprt for Linux (and Windows via WSL) and a
native macOS app via libghostty for awhile now. The GLFW apprt only
remained within the tree for a few reasons:

  1. Primarily, it provided a faster feedback loop on macOS because
     building the macOS app historically required us to hop out of the
     zig build system and into Xcode, which is slow and cumbersome.

  2. It was a convenient way to narrow whether a bug was in the
     core Ghostty codebase or in the apprt itself. If a bug was in both
     the glfw and macOS app then it was likely in the core.

  3. It provided us a way on macOS to test OpenGL.

All of these reasons are no longer valid. Respectively:

  1. Our Zig build scripts now execute the `xcodebuild` CLI directly and
     can open the resulting app, stream logs, etc. This is the same
     experience we have on Linux. (Xcode has always been a dependency of
     building on macOS in general, so this is not cumbersome.)

  2. We have a healthy group of maintainers, many of which have access
     to both macOS and Linux, so we can quickly narrow down bugs
     regardless of the apprt.

  3. Our OpenGL renderer hasn't been compatible with macOS for some time
     now, so this is no longer a useful feature.

At this point, the GLFW apprt is just a burden. It adds complexity
across the board, and some people try to run Ghostty with it in the real
world and get confused when it doesn't work (it's always been lacking in
features and buggy compared to the other apprts).

So, it's time to say goodbye. Its bittersweet because it is a big part
of Ghostty's history, but we've grown up now and it's time to move on.
Thank you, goodbye.

(NOTE: If you are a user of the GLFW apprt, then please fork the project
prior to this commit or start a new project based on it. We've warned
against using it for a very, very long time now.)

2025-07-04 14:12:18 -07:00

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Packaging Ghostty for Distribution

Ghostty relies on downstream package maintainers to distribute Ghostty to end-users. This document provides guidance to package maintainers on how to package Ghostty for distribution.

Important

This document is only accurate for the Ghostty source alongside it. Do not use this document for older or newer versions of Ghostty! If you are reading this document in a different version of Ghostty, please find the PACKAGING.md file alongside that version.

Source Tarballs

Source tarballs with stable checksums are available for tagged releases at release.files.ghostty.org in the following URL format where VERSION is the version number with no prefix such as 1.0.0:

https://release.files.ghostty.org/VERSION/ghostty-VERSION.tar.gz
https://release.files.ghostty.org/VERSION/ghostty-VERSION.tar.gz.minisig

Signature files are signed with minisign using the following public key:

RWQlAjJC23149WL2sEpT/l0QKy7hMIFhYdQOFy0Z7z7PbneUgvlsnYcV

Tip source tarballs are available on the GitHub releases page. Use the ghostty-source.tar.gz asset and not the GitHub auto-generated source tarball. These tarballs are generated for every commit to the main branch and are not associated with a specific version.

Warning

Source tarballs are not the same as a Git checkout. Source tarballs contain some preprocessed files that allow building Ghostty with less dependencies. If you are building Ghostty from a Git checkout, the steps below are the same but they may require additional dependencies not listed here. See the README.md for more information on building from a Git checkout.

For everyone except Ghostty developers, please use the source tarballs. We generate tip source tarballs for users following the development branch.

Zig Version

Zig is required to build Ghostty. Prior to Zig 1.0, Zig releases often have breaking changes. Ghostty requires specific Zig versions depending on the Ghostty version in order to build. To make things easier for package maintainers, Ghostty always uses some released version of Zig.

To find the version of Zig required to build Ghostty, check the required_zig constant in build.zig. You don't need to know Zig to extract this information. This version will always be an official released version of Zig.

For example, at the time of writing this document, Ghostty requires Zig 0.14.0.

Building Ghostty

The following is a standard example of how to build Ghostty for system packages. This is not the recommended way to build Ghostty for your own system. For that, see the primary README.

First, we fetch our dependencies from the internet into a cached directory. This is the only step that requires internet access:

ZIG_GLOBAL_CACHE_DIR=/tmp/offline-cache ./nix/build-support/fetch-zig-cache.sh

Next, we build Ghostty. This step requires no internet access:

DESTDIR=/tmp/ghostty \
zig build \
  --prefix /usr \
  --system /tmp/offline-cache/p \
  -Doptimize=ReleaseFast \
  -Dcpu=baseline

The build options are covered in the next section, but this will build and install Ghostty to /tmp/ghostty with the prefix /usr (i.e. the binary will be at /tmp/ghostty/usr/bin/ghostty). This style is common for system packages which separate a build and install step, since the install step can then be done with a mv or cp command (from /tmp/ghostty to wherever the package manager expects it).

Build Options

Ghostty uses the Zig build system. You can see all available build options by running zig build --help. The following are options that are particularly relevant to package maintainers:

--prefix: The installation prefix. Combine with the DESTDIR environment variable to install to a temporary directory for packaging.
--system: The path to the offline cache directory. This disables any package fetching from the internet. This flag also triggers all dependencies to be dynamically linked by default. This flag also makes the binary a PIE (Position Independent Executable) by default (override with -Dpie).
-Doptimize=ReleaseFast: Build with optimizations enabled and safety checks disabled. This is the recommended build mode for distribution. I'd prefer a safe build but terminal emulators are performance-sensitive and the safe build is currently too slow. I plan to improve this in the future. Other build modes are available: Debug, ReleaseSafe, and ReleaseSmall.
-Dcpu=baseline: Build for the "baseline" CPU of the target architecture. This avoids building for newer CPU features that may not be available on all target machines.
-Dtarget=$arch-$os-$abi: Build for a specific target triple. This is often necessary for system packages to specify a specific minimum Linux version, glibc, etc. Run zig targets to a get a full list of available targets.