ghostty: init at 1.0.0

[jcollie]

Adding Ghostty:

Ghostty is a terminal emulator that differentiates itself by being fast, feature-rich, and native. While there are many excellent terminal emulators available, they all force you to choose between speed, features, or native UIs. Ghostty provides all three.

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandboxing enabled in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
  • sandbox = relaxed
  • sandbox = true
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 25.05 Release Notes (or backporting 24.11 and 25.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

---

Add a 👍 reaction to pull requests you find important.

[pluiedev]

Also needs to be reformatted w/ nixfmt-rfc-style (the nixpkgs-vet CI failure is a zig2nix bug that we can't really control)

[Enzime]

Suggested change

	platforms = lib.platforms.linux;
	platforms = lib.platforms.linux ++ lib.platforms.darwin;

If it doesn’t build on macOS, it would be better to set broken

[pluiedev]

It's less that it doesn't build on Darwin and more it can't build on Darwin since xcodebuild has to be invoked outside of the Nix build environment. I think we should just repackage the .dmg for now until we somehow figure out a way to compile it with Nix

[Enzime]

I’m curious why that’s the case

And whether that’s been tested since the darwin SDK refactor

[pluiedev]

Ultimately neither I nor @jcollie have Darwin setups to test with, so either someone comes forward with a better idea, or we have to stick with a repackaging for now

[jcollie]

I don't think that anyone has tried since the darwin refactor. I won't be doing that work because I don't have a macOS machine to test on.

[Eveeifyeve]

I don't think that anyone has tried since the darwin refactor. I won't be doing that work because I don't have a macOS machine to test on.

I could test, I willing be happy to help to support darwin. I have a m2 macbook which means I can cross compile.

[anund]

I believe discussions on this topic are happening on matrix https://matrix.to/#/#macos:nixos.org (though more focused on getting the build tooling chain working for source builds). I'm not sure where work to package the DMG is happening/being discussed.

[Samasaur1]

Long story short is that building the Mac app from source appears to be blocked on getting our Swift situation into a better place (if anyone has ideas on how to do a source build with our current Swift setup, please chime in in that matrix room).

I haven't seen anything about packaging the DMG.

[nmattia]

Bit of a drive by comment but: for my setup and https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty I eventually gave up and used the dmg directly; some features (like OS notifications) require signed executables

https://github.com/nmattia/homies/blob/1c27051828b7c10ba2cda8cc790cc50bd796b423/kitty/default.nix#L11

[Atemu]

Please keep the macOS discussion for follow-up PRs or issues. @jcollie has already mentioned that they won't be the one doing any sort of macOS support.

Please add the platforms though and set badPlatforms or broken.

[pluiedev]

Just needs mister @ofborg to be happy

[lilyball]

Any chance we can also get Ghostty's terminfo file added to the NixOS terminfo database, or does that belong in a separate PR?

[jcollie]

Any chance we can also get Ghostty's terminfo file added to the NixOS terminfo database, or does that belong in a separate PR?

That should be handled already, there's a terminfo output in the package and environment.enableAllTerminfo should install it.

[GaetanLepage]

nixpkgs-review result

Generated using nixpkgs-review.

Command: nixpkgs-review pr 368404

---

x86_64-linux

⏩ 2 packages blacklisted:

• nixos-install-tools
• tests.nixos-functions.nixos-test

✅ 4 packages built:

• ghostty
• ghostty.shell_integration
• ghostty.terminfo
• ghostty.vim

---

aarch64-linux

⏩ 2 packages blacklisted:

• nixos-install-tools
• tests.nixos-functions.nixos-test

✅ 4 packages built:

• ghostty
• ghostty.shell_integration
• ghostty.terminfo
• ghostty.vim

[pbsds]

Could you add this to nixos/tests/terminal-emulators.nix and add the resulting test to passthru.tests?

[surfaceflinger]

Would it be possible to include a patch so that ghostty runs without io_uring (which is disabled on linux-hardened)?

sed -i 's/^const xev = @import("xev");$/const xev = @import("xev").Epoll;/' **/*.zig

https://discord.com/channels/1005603569187160125/1312996817264181350 (sorry)
mitchellh/libxev#131

No idea if this causes any visible performance issues

[philiptaron]

Would it be possible to include a patch so that ghostty runs without io_uring (which is disabled on linux-hardened)?

That's the sort of thing that you can patch with overrideAttrs in your own Nix config. Let's follow upstream's lead here.

[fpletz]

The runtime closure includes all the zig sources:

$ nix path-info --recursive ./result
[...]
/nix/store/8pgw0b3ymk014c1v7l5pc9ymj4dfd6nx-freetype
/nix/store/9bgzradqy1346lcj56d32mfcdjyinjk6-oniguruma
/nix/store/az6rd4gxwskz4y6l94cm0axgn5bks3wa-glfw
/nix/store/b2wn0akxsjr3g5gx3yzahmgj588q44mp-vaxis
/nix/store/c1qpqqm0m13mblz3f33saa27sxxd3m1x-wuffs
/nix/store/d6h0qkxnq0abkg7483c7x66b8sappdyd-z2d
/nix/store/dpqgcdf9nc4jn0dwbxbvy1vqvfyl77sa-vulkan_headers
/nix/store/dr9nnmiawcanp8wr7p99jdyb41yxfw3a-highway
/nix/store/f5zs2lbbx451slw0h91dlgldfv3cr63v-utfcpp
/nix/store/fl90p12n0yxvkhhn2kfhirhc320lgxpk-wayland_headers
/nix/store/gj6v5dbyacy8z9ph5llmagmf128vdl1x-iterm2_themes
/nix/store/h4n0xbm6dg132v7g0v3zq9g8qvrmclmr-ghostty-1.0.0-terminfo
/nix/store/h991k3x95mmig7i993dfyibbmiqn094p-fontconfig
/nix/store/hs1vqpyyw2xg04jpy7y21127iw1sjyyz-zigimg
/nix/store/ilx7scnpgxycfmj6cq5qf31spyykma84-libpng
/nix/store/q6jsp14xjmk08zqf8gg9hfc95448sghc-harfbuzz
/nix/store/qb3f9gd22c2sbp00ng1fpk7hmfk23wvm-zig_objc
/nix/store/qp1m1zci2n60idvv79sblq82lml18l6g-imgui
/nix/store/wa8zy9z7ngwn9mzhjpqxy1260dzngczj-glslang
/nix/store/xbwlxzyyzha763mz231bia72ybnzmbbc-mach_glfw
/nix/store/xk13b5q3c3x7rh1rqm355zf0y1zdgm9p-libxev
/nix/store/xwnpf0q80wijjnn4s7sk82syxdfzqhzh-zlib
/nix/store/p9p2056gs8cqqiwsnrpdvhk12rbd40si-ghostty-cache-1.0.0
/nix/store/w6skm2pz5dc6dk8w2g92hl2jd2q2yc49-oniguruma-6.9.9-lib
/nix/store/wqnzn50w9kflabjlnm8m3sm8k5kbwgf5-ghostty-1.0.0-shell_integration
/nix/store/xgfyyyxxpq5x6rd15w2xigwzdiv10gni-ghostty-1.0.0

Would be nice if we could get rid of those references. There seems to be a reference in the binary to /nix/store/p9p2056gs8cqqiwsnrpdvhk12rbd40si-ghostty-cache-1.0.0/1220bc6b9daceaf7c8c60f3c3998058045ba0c5c5f48ae255ff97776d9cd8bfc6402/imgui_demo.cpp. I think we should be able remove this without causing issues using removeReferencesTo.

Here is the fix, feel free to squash into your init commit: jcollie/nixpkgs@ghostty-init-1.0.0...fpletz:nixpkgs:pr/368404/remove-zig-src-refs

[getchoo]

It may also be nice to pull glslang, spriv-cross, and simdutf as well since we have them in Nixpkgs: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/35b9ceee2116331b83c0c86269394e2545070b0f/build.zig#L271-L280

[jcollie]

@jcollie can you fix the formatting issue please ?

Formatting fixed.

[GaetanLepage]

Thanks !
Let's merge this PR now. If any issue shows up, we can surely fix it in a follow up PR.

[rhodes-b]

Can provide an option to build without gtk? kde users may want

No. The GLFW frontend is missing many features and is intended only for a rapid edit/compile/test cycle for developers. The macOS frontend only works on macOS, obviously. A native Qt frontend is possible, but that wildly out of the scope of a packaging request.

To make this more explicit this is a quote from mitchell below, and it will continue to be a developer only runtime

Note the GLFW build has bugs, memory corruption, crashes, and is missing dozens of features. It’s only used for Dev and isn’t suitable for daily use.

[jcollie]

OK, I believe that I have addressed all of the requested changes at this point.

[pluiedev]

Let's do this

[getchoo]

@ofborg build ghostty

[getchoo]

@ofborg build ghostty ghostty.passthru.tests
@ofborg test allTerminfo

[getchoo]

$ nix-build -A ghostty --eval-system x86_64-linux
/nix/store/581anvgyq96jsams23xz85h5brr04jaq-ghostty-1.0.0
$ nix-build -A ghostty --eval-system aarch64-linux
/nix/store/2xdmahyczwsaabivpqzz30smfjvimc4n-ghostty-1.0.0

Changes were addressed

[getchoo]

Thanks for your work here @jcollie, as well as the many reviewers! 🥳

I will be making a follow up PR to address some of the other suggestions here, hopefully followed by a backport to 24.05 and Darwin support

And obligatory mention: we ended up becoming the second most upvoted PR in Nixpkgs

[Eveeifyeve]

Thanks for your work here @jcollie, as well as the many reviewers! 🥳

I will be making a follow up PR to address some of the other suggestions here, hopefully followed by a backport to 24.05 and Darwin support

I will be making a pr that hopefully adds darwin support, but one of the things that need to be done first is swift 6 and 5.10 in nixpkgs then it will be possible.