We Rewrote the Ghostty GTK Application
Mitchell HashimotoWe Rewrote the Ghostty GTK ApplicationAugust 14, 2025We just completed rewriting the Ghostty GTK application fully embracing the GObject type system from Zig and also verifying with Valgrind every step of the way. The result is a more feature rich, stable, and maintainable Ghostty on Linux and BSD. There are multiple interesting, technical topics from this process, but I want to focus in on two (1) interfacing with the GObject type system from Zig and (2) verifying a GTK application with Valgrind and reflecting on the memory issues Valgrind found in a Zig codebase. Background First, some quick background. Ghostty is cross-platform (macOS, Linux, FreeBSD) terminal emulator. Ghostty sets itself apart from other cross-platform terminal emulators by using a platform-native…
