cool-retro-term (Windows Port)

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Description

cool-retro-term is a terminal emulator which mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. It has been designed to be eye-candy, customizable, and reasonably lightweight.

This is the Windows 11 port by pushingpandas, based on the original cool-retro-term by Filippo Scognamiglio.

It uses the QML port of qtermwidget (Konsole) with a custom Windows ConPTY backend replacing the POSIX PTY layer.

Settings such as colors, fonts, and effects can be accessed via the menu bar at the top and the right-click context menu. Both are available on Windows.

Download & Run

1. Download the latest .zip from the Releases page
2. Extract the zip to any folder
3. Run cool-retro-term.exe from the extracted folder

The exe and all required Qt6 DLLs are in the same folder — no installation needed.

Building from source? After running nmake, the exe is at app\release\cool-retro-term.exe. See Building on Windows for full instructions.

Screenshots

Windows Port Details

What was changed

• ConPTY backend: New conpty.cpp, conptydevice.cpp, conptyprocess.cpp replace POSIX PTY for terminal I/O on Windows using the Windows Pseudo Console API (ConPTY)
• Threaded pipe I/O: Reader/Writer threads with ReadFile/WriteFile (Windows anonymous pipes don't work with QSocketNotifier)
• mmap emulation: win32_compat.h provides mmap/munmap/getpagesize via VirtualAlloc for terminal history
• OpenGL rendering: Forces OpenGL backend since D3D11's FXC shader compiler can't handle the CRT effect shaders
• Shell detection: Finds PowerShell Core (pwsh) > Windows PowerShell (powershell) > cmd.exe
• Consolas fallback font: Uses Consolas as the monospace fallback on Windows
• Menu bar: Always visible on Windows (File, Edit, View, Profiles, Help)
• Shader compilation: All 63 shader variants recompiled with HLSL 5.1 support

Requirements

• Windows 10 version 1809+ (for ConPTY API) or Windows 11
• Qt 6.8+ (MSVC 2022 build)
• Visual Studio 2022 (Build Tools or Community)

Building on Windows

Prerequisites

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 (Community edition or Build Tools) with "Desktop development with C++" workload
2. Install Qt 6.8+ for MSVC 2022 64-bit
3. Make sure qmake is in your PATH (e.g., D:\Qt\6.8.3\msvc2022_64\bin)

Build

rem Open a "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022" or run:
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64
set PATH=D:\Qt\6.8.3\msvc2022_64\bin;%PATH%

cd cool-retro-term
qmake cool-retro-term.pro -spec win32-msvc
nmake

Or use the provided build_win.bat (edit paths to match your Qt installation first).

Compile Shaders

rem Edit compile_shaders.bat to set your Qt qsb.exe path, then:
compile_shaders.bat

Deploy

mkdir deploy
copy app\release\cool-retro-term.exe deploy\
cd deploy
windeployqt cool-retro-term.exe

rem Copy QMLTermWidget plugin
mkdir qt6\qml\QMLTermWidget
copy ..\qmltermwidget\release\qmltermwidget.dll qt6\qml\QMLTermWidget\
copy ..\qmltermwidget\src\qmldir qt6\qml\QMLTermWidget\
copy ..\qmltermwidget\src\QMLTermScrollbar.qml qt6\qml\QMLTermWidget\

rem Move Qt6 DLLs to qt6/ subfolder for a clean layout
mkdir qt6
move Qt6*.dll qt6\
move D3Dcompiler_47.dll qt6\
move opengl32sw.dll qt6\
rem Also move: generic, iconengines, imageformats, networkinformation,
rem platforms, qml, qmltooling, sqldrivers, styles, tls, translations into qt6/

rem Install Qt5Compat.GraphicalEffects (download from Qt if not present)
rem Install Qt6ShaderTools.dll into qt6/

Run

Launch via cool-retro-term.bat (sets DLL paths) or run cool-retro-term.exe directly if Qt6 DLLs are in PATH.

Original Project

Based on cool-retro-term by Filippo Scognamiglio. For Linux and macOS builds, see the original repository.

License

GPL v3 - see LICENSE file.

Windows port Copyright (C) 2024 pushingpandas. Original Copyright (C) 2013-2021 Filippo Scognamiglio.

Contact

Windows port: A. Prior — a.prior@pushingpandas.io | pushingpandas.io