Ghostty's GTK Rewrite: A Triumph of GObject and Valgrind

2025-08-15

The Ghostty terminal emulator's GTK application underwent a complete rewrite, fully embracing the GObject type system from Zig and rigorously using Valgrind for memory verification at every step. The result is a more feature-rich, stable, and maintainable Ghostty on Linux and BSD. The rewrite addressed previous memory management issues stemming from avoiding the GObject system, simplifying tasks like configuration reloading using GObject's property change notification system. Valgrind uncovered a few memory issues, mostly related to C API interactions, demonstrating the effectiveness of Zig's memory safety features in a large, complex project.

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