ghostty: add module

[HeitorAugustoLN]

Description

Adds a module for ghostty terminal emulator, depends on NixOS/nixpkgs#368404
Closes #6236

Checklist

• Change is backwards compatible.

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• Code tested through nix-shell --pure tests -A run.all or nix develop --ignore-environment .#all using Flakes.

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Maintainer CC

[anund]

You could also look at module options adding the vim/bat plugins that ship with ghostty. In $out/share there are several external application integrations, I think only vim and bat require user intervention to configure.

https://github.com/clo4/ghostty-hm-module @clo4 might have additional insight to share

[anund]

  programs.bat = {
    syntaxes = {
      ghostty = {
        src = ghostty;
        file = "share/bat/syntaxes/ghostty.sublime-syntax";
      };
    };
    config = {
      map-syntax = [ "*/ghostty/config:Ghostty Config" ];
      # or more explicit
      # map-syntax = [ "${config.xdg.configHome}/ghostty/config:Ghostty Config" ];
    };
  };

  programs.vim.plugins = [
    ghostty.vim
  ]; 

[HeitorAugustoLN]

You could also look at module options adding the vim/bat plugins that ship with ghostty. In $out/share there are several
external application integrations, I think only vim and bat require user intervention to configure.

https://github.com/clo4/ghostty-hm-module @clo4 might have additional insight to share

Didn't knew this was a thing, I will look into it.

[arunoruto]

Maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure how to add keybindings using the config...
I thought it should be set as an array, but I get an error that it should be of type atom (null, bool, int, float or string). Maybe an additional setting for keybindings could be implemented? The format could be a set with "shortcut" = "action" and it get squished down into a string keybind = shortcut=action.

[HeitorAugustoLN]

Maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure how to add keybindings using the config... I thought it should be set as an array, but I get an error that it should be of type atom (null, bool, int, float or string). Maybe an additional setting for keybindings could be implemented? The format could be a set with "shortcut" = "action" and it get squished down into a string keybind = shortcut=action.

{
  programs.ghostty.settings = {
    keybind = [
      "clear"
      "ctrl+h=goto_split:left"
      "ctrl+l=goto_split:right"
      # etc.
    ];
  };
}

If this doesn't work for you right now, maybe you should update the input.

I wouldn't really like to create an option solely for keybindings, because I don't think it is really needed. My only concern is the keybind = clear, since I don't know if it's position matters on the configuration file or not. But if it does maybe I will need to create a separate option for that.

[anund]

ghostty-org/ghostty#3203 has a good summary explanation for the config format.

[arunoruto]

Maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure how to add keybindings using the config... I thought it should be set as an array, but I get an error that it should be of type atom (null, bool, int, float or string). Maybe an additional setting for keybindings could be implemented? The format could be a set with "shortcut" = "action" and it get squished down into a string keybind = shortcut=action.

{
  programs.ghostty.settings = {
    keybind = [
      "clear"
      "ctrl+h=goto_split:left"
      "ctrl+l=goto_split:right"
      # etc.
    ];
  };
}

If this doesn't work for you right now, maybe you should update the input.

I wouldn't really like to create an option solely for keybindings, because I don't think it is really needed. My only concern is the keybind = clear, since I don't know if it's position matters on the configuration file or not. But if it does maybe I will need to create a separate option for that.

Fair enough, I just came up at the same solution! Thanks tho!

[HeitorAugustoLN]

Added a option for prepending keybind = clear before settings so it doesn't reset some custom keybinds

[zoedsoupe]

wow! i was starting to implement this module! awesome!

now question i have is: I don't know how home-manager aims to tackle this or if there's a standard, but some module have extensive nix options representing actual settings items and others have a generic 'settings' option that receive a raw string while others have a mix of 'native' options in addition to the extraConfig option.

based in the standard (or not), does it make sense to try to implement native options in nix for the Ghostty settings? I could tackle this in another pr if this is the case. wdyt?

[HeitorAugustoLN]

now question i have is: I don't know how home-manager aims to tackle this or if there's a standard, but some module have extensive nix options representing actual settings items and others have a generic 'settings' option that receive a raw string while others have a mix of 'native' options in addition to the extraConfig option.

There is a standard: RFC 0042, which is what I’m following for this PR. But yeah, not all modules implement it.

Based on the standard (or not), does it make sense to try and implement native options in Nix for Ghostty’s settings? If it does, I could take this on in another PR. What do you think?

Technically, I could create a submodule to map out all the Ghostty options and then add a freeformType for anything not covered. But honestly, that feels super counterintuitive. It would take a ton of time and still end up with the same result. Plus, over time, as Ghostty adds more options (and it already has a ton), it’ll just get harder to maintain. Check out the motivation section in the RFC.

That said, there are cases where mapping options is worth it, like if the upstream project doesn’t have proper documentation for their settings. But that’s not the case with Ghostty, they’ve got a solid configuration reference

[arunoruto]

I got feedback on my PR for adding ghostty to stylix. One question was if there was a way to configure custom themes using the HM module. AFAIK the theme can only be set, but not provided. Are there any plans on adding this feature in this PR, or should I open up a new one when this one gets merged?

[HeitorAugustoLN]

I got feedback on my PR for adding ghostty to stylix. One question was if there was a way to configure custom themes using the HM module. AFAIK the theme can only be set, but not provided. Are there any plans on adding this feature in this PR, or should I open up a new one when this one gets merged?

I will add an option to add themes

[HeitorAugustoLN]

@arunoruto added themes option

[rycee]

Thanks for the contribution! Looks good in general, I've just added a few minor comments.

[anund]

May want to add an option for an ssh terminfo work around. Named to indicate it's a work around. See https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo#ssh (there could be better ways to address this)

  programs.ssh = {
    matchBlocks = {
      "*" = {
        extraOptions = {
          SetEnv = "TERM=xterm-256color";
        };
      };
    };
  };    

[anund]

Could also include shell-integration flags following the manual integration steps here: https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo#ssh. Similar to kitty, though I don't think you need the extra mangling they to to set no-rc.

[HeitorAugustoLN]

Some updates:

• I decided to drop the installVimSyntax option since the package already takes care of it.
• Added optional shell integration options

[HeitorAugustoLN]

I wanted to ask what needs to be done, to change the draft status and marge it :)

I would like to mark it as ready after flake.lock gets updated, #6240 updates it, but still in a older version of nixos-unstable.

[surfaceflinger]

I think rycee or someone could manually trigger the flake update workflow, otherwise you'll have to wait until Wednesday and then for a merge

[anund]

For the vim syntax: adding programs.vim.plugins = [ ghostty.vim ]; is required by users. nixpkgs/home-manager vim modules will not automatically add the plugin. Just to confuse things: Neovim will.

[HeitorAugustoLN]

For the vim syntax: adding programs.vim.plugins = [ ghostty.vim ]; is required by users. nixpkgs/home-manager vim modules will not automatically add the plugin. Just to confuse things: Neovim will.

I completely forgot that vim handles things differently, re-added the option exclusively for vim

[rycee]

Thanks! Merged to master now 🙂

[nyabinary]

Does this have nushell integration?

[arunoruto]

Does this have nushell integration?

Ghostty does not provide a nushell integration according to their docs

[anund]

Not currently no. See https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/tree/main/src/shell-integration and perhaps https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/1772/files / https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/1774/files as a sketch pr for adding a new shell. (elvish was added later as a couple changes)

[HeitorAugustoLN]

Does this have nushell integration?

Some shells such as Nushell have built-in support for some of the features that Ghostty provides, so shell integration is not necessary.

This is what they have in their documentation

[NeQuissimus]

This module does break when bat is enabled. It looks like the syntax files are not as expected by that module.

[HeitorAugustoLN]

This module does break when bat is enabled. It looks like the syntax files are not as expected by that module.

Could you provide the error for me? I have bat enabled in my configuration, and it didn't fail to build, last time I updated my configuration

[NeQuissimus]

Starting Home Manager activation
Activating checkFilesChanged
Activating checkLaunchAgents
Activating checkLinkTargets
Activating writeBoundary
Activating linkGeneration
Cleaning up orphan links from /Users/nequi
Creating profile generation 85
Creating home file links in /Users/nequi
Activating batCache
No themes were found in '/Users/nequi/.config/bat/themes', using the default set
[bat error]: error finding all the files in a directory: IO error for operation on /Users/nequi/.config/ba
t/syntaxes/ghostty.sublime-syntax: No such file or directory (os error 2)

Relevant configs:

  programs = {
    bat.enable = true;

    ghostty = {
      enable = true;
      enableZshIntegration = true;

      settings = {
        auto-update = "off";
        background-opacity = 0.8;
        confirm-close-surface = false;
        font-family = "FiraCode Nerd Font Mono";
        font-size = 12;
        theme = "Teerb";
      };
    };
};

[HeitorAugustoLN]

I see you are on macOS, so my guess is that the bat syntax file is not available in the darwin package for some reason, and looks like the package got marked again as broken on darwin