deepin-terminal-ghostty

deepin-terminal-ghostty is the next-generation Deepin terminal emulator, rewritten on top of libghostty-vt.

It keeps the Deepin desktop integration and DTK-native experience of deepin-terminal, while replacing the terminal core with Ghostty's VT engine to build a faster, cleaner, and more modern foundation for future terminal features.

Vertical Tabs:

Emoji Support:

Builtin Themes:

Workspace Overview:

Overview

This project is a Linux terminal emulator built with:

• C++20
• Qt6 Widgets
• DTK6
• libghostty-vt

The repository currently produces:

• qtghostty: a reusable Qt wrapper around libghostty-vt
• deepin-terminal-ghostty: the desktop terminal application built on top of that library

Why This Project

deepin-terminal-ghostty is intended to become the successor to deepin-terminal.

The rewrite focuses on three goals:

• modernize the terminal core with Ghostty's VT implementation
• preserve a native Deepin desktop experience instead of a generic cross-platform shell UI
• create a cleaner architecture that can support tabs, splits, settings, remote workflows, and future rendering improvements

Current Highlights

The current development branch already includes:

• session save and restore — preserves tabs, split layouts, working directories, and terminal content (including colors) across restarts
• split panes inside a tab
• tabbed terminal workflow with horizontal and vertical tab modes
• workspace overview with live tab previews, search, and keyboard navigation
• Quake / drop-down terminal mode with focus-loss auto-hide
• D-Bus control service and dtermctl CLI for scriptable windows, tabs, splits, and command execution
• minimal storage footprint
• 40+ built-in color themes plus light/dark/system and custom theme support
• adaptive color emoji rendering with a custom FreeType/HarfBuzz fallback when Qt cannot render color emoji correctly
• Kitty image protocol support for inline image placements
• inline terminal content search
• clickable hyperlinks — OSC 8 explicit links and automatic bare URL detection
• adjustable opacity and window background blur
• drag-and-drop file paths into the terminal
• saved SSH server configurations with quick-connect panel

Supported OSC Sequences

Operating System Command (OSC) sequences let programs talk to the terminal. Parsing is handled by libghostty-vt; the sequences below are wired into the application.

Sequence	Purpose	Notes
OSC 0 / OSC 2	Window and tab title	Keeps tab text and window title in sync
OSC 4, 10, 11, 12, 104, 110–112	Query, set, and reset palette, foreground, background, and cursor colors	Queries answer with the active theme colors
OSC 7	Report working directory	Used for new tabs/splits and session restore
OSC 8	Explicit hyperlinks	Ctrl+click to open
OSC 9	Desktop notification (body only)	Sent through org.freedesktop.Notifications
OSC 9;4	Progress report (ConEmu)	Thin progress bar at the bottom of the pane
OSC 52	Write to the clipboard	Reading the clipboard is not supported
OSC 133	Semantic prompts (FinalTerm)	Prompt start clears active OSC 7501 records; cmdline_url sets the running command
OSC 633;E	Running command (VS Code shell integration)	Drives the pane's process icon
OSC 777;notify	Desktop notification with title (rxvt)	Sent through org.freedesktop.Notifications
OSC 1337;SetUserVar=WEZTERM_PROG	Running command (WezTerm shell integration)	Drives the pane's process icon
OSC 7501	Program status protocol	Answers the OSC 7501;? support query; status shows as a dot on background tabs in the vertical sidebar: orange (blocked), blue (working), green (done), red (error)

The built-in bash/zsh shell integration also uses a few private OSC 777;ShellCommand… sequences to track running commands and their exit codes. See Custom OSC Sequences.

Project Status

This project is under active development.

The core application is already usable and the main window workflow is in place, but the product is still evolving toward a full next-generation replacement for deepin-terminal.

Architecture

The codebase is split into two layers.

qtghostty

The library layer in src/libqtghostty/ provides terminal-facing capabilities:

• PTY session lifecycle
• terminal widget integration with libghostty-vt
• input encoding and output processing
• rendering and terminal state updates

This layer is designed to stay reusable and free of app-specific UI concepts such as tabs, panes, or settings dialogs.

deepin-terminal-ghostty

The application layer in src/app/ provides the product experience:

• DTK main window and titlebar integration
• tab management (horizontal and vertical modes)
• split-pane orchestration
• session save and restore
• theme management and application
• settings UI
• remote management panel
• inline search
• application-level actions and shortcuts

Repository Layout

.
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── lib/
│   ├── include/
│   └── libghostty-vt.so
├── src/
│   ├── libqtghostty/
│   ├── app/
│   └── logging/
├── tests/
├── translations/
├── debian/
└── docs/

Build Requirements

Platform:

• Linux only

Build dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install cmake qt6-base-dev build-essential binutils \
  libdtk6widget-dev libdtk6core-dev libdtk6gui-dev \
  libfontconfig-dev libfreetype-dev libharfbuzz-dev

Ghostty headers are expected under lib/include/ in this repository, or can be provided through GHOSTTY_INCLUDE_DIR.

Build

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Run the application:

./build/deepin-terminal-ghostty

Tests

Enable tests, build, and run:

cmake -B build -DBUILD_TESTING=ON
cmake --build build
cd build && ctest --output-on-failure

Individual test binaries:

./build/tests/test_appsettings
./build/tests/test_pty_session
./build/tests/test_terminal_widget
./build/tests/test_main_window
./build/tests/test_session_snapshot
./build/tests/test_session_manager
./build/tests/test_server_config_manager

Packaging

Build Debian packages with:

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b

The resulting .deb files will be generated in the parent directory.

Roadmap

The long-term direction includes:

• continuing feature parity work with deepin-terminal
• expanding mouse, selection, clipboard, and search workflows
• maturing remote and session management features
• exploring a future GPU-backed rendering path

License

LGPL-2.1-or-later