Go Libghostty Bindings#
Go bindings for libghostty-vt.
This project uses cgo but libghostty-vt
only depends on libc, so it is very easy to static link and very
easy to cross-compile. The bindings default to static linking for this
reason.
WARNING
I'm not promising any API stability yet. This is a new project and the API may change as necessary. The underlying functionality is very stable, but the Go API is still being designed.
Example#
package main
import (
"fmt"
"log"
"go.mitchellh.com/libghostty"
)
func main() {
term, err := libghostty.NewTerminal(libghostty.WithSize(80, 24))
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
defer term.Close()
// Feed VT data — bold green "world", then plain text.
fmt.Fprintf(term, "Hello, \033[1;32mworld\033[0m!\r\n")
// Format the terminal contents as plain text.
f, err := libghostty.NewFormatter(term,
libghostty.WithFormatterFormat(libghostty.FormatterFormatPlain),
libghostty.WithFormatterTrim(true),
)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
defer f.Close()
output, _ := f.FormatString()
fmt.Println(output) // Hello, world!
}
More examples are in the examples/ directory.
Usage#
Add the module to your Go project:
go get go.mitchellh.com/libghostty
This is a cgo package that links libghostty-vt via pkg-config. By
default it links statically. Before building your project, you need the
library installed. Either install it system-wide or set PKG_CONFIG_PATH
to point to a local checkout:
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/libghostty-vt/share/pkgconfig
To link dynamically instead (requires the shared library at runtime, so you'll also need to set the library path):
go build -tags dynamic
See the Ghostty docs for
building libghostty-vt from source.
Cross-Compilation#
Because libghostty-vt only depends on libc, cross-compilation is
straightforward using Zig as the C compiler.
Zig is already required to build libghostty-vt, so no extra tooling
is needed. You don't need to write any Zig code, we're just using
Zig as a C/C++ compiler.
First, build libghostty-vt for your target (from the ghostty source tree):
zig build -Demit-lib-vt -Dtarget=x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix /tmp/ghostty-linux-amd64
Then cross-compile your Go project with zig cc:
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 \
CC="zig cc -target x86_64-linux-gnu" \
CXX="zig c++ -target x86_64-linux-gnu" \
CGO_CFLAGS="-I/tmp/ghostty-linux-amd64/include -DGHOSTTY_STATIC" \
CGO_LDFLAGS="-L/tmp/ghostty-linux-amd64/lib -lghostty-vt" \
go build ./...
Supported targets include x86_64-linux-gnu, aarch64-linux-gnu,
x86_64-macos, aarch64-macos, x86_64-windows-gnu, and
aarch64-windows-gnu.
If you are using ghostty's CMake integration via FetchContent, the
ghostty_vt_add_target() function handles the zig build for you:
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(ghostty)
ghostty_vt_add_target(NAME linux-amd64 ZIG_TARGET x86_64-linux-gnu)
See the ghostty CMakeLists.txt
for full documentation of ghostty_vt_add_target().
Development#
CMake fetches and builds libghostty-vt automatically. CMake is only
required and used for development of this module. For actual downstream
usage, you can get libghostty-vt available however you like (e.g. system
package, local checkout, etc.).
You need Zig and CMake on your PATH.
make build
make test
# If in a Nix dev shell:
go build
go test
If you use the Nix dev shell (nix develop), go build and go test
work directly — the shell configures all paths automatically.