https://github.com/tale/trap2

A "suckless-inspired" GPU accelerated terminal
https://github.com/tale/trap2

glfw opengl vt220 vterm xterm

Last synced: 14 days ago
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A "suckless-inspired" GPU accelerated terminal

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/tale/trap2
• Owner: tale
• License: bsd-3-clause
• Created: 2023-11-03T06:46:10.000Z (about 1 year ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2024-02-16T22:33:37.000Z (9 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-05-01T13:49:32.894Z (6 months ago)
• Topics: glfw, opengl, vt220, vterm, xterm
• Language: C
• Homepage:
• Size: 8.75 MB
• Stars: 5
• Watchers: 1
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • Funding: .github/FUNDING.yml
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        
# trap2

> A "suckless-inspired" GPU accelerated terminal emulator.

`trap2` is a terminal emulator that uses the GPU to render the terminal.

It's built with OpenGL 3.3 Core Profile, GLFW 3, and `libvterm`, with a focus on simplicity and performance.

### Future Goals

This is very much a work in progress, and I have a lot of ideas for the future:

- [ ] Integrate clipboard support

- [ ] Better testing harnesses

### Rationale

The development of this terminal emulator ties closely to my CS367 Systems Engineering class at George Mason University.

One of the projects required me to implement a shell from scratch, so I decided to try and also build a basic terminal emulator.

I've always been interested in terminal emulators, and I've always wanted to build one myself.

This is a learning project for me, so it will always be an amalgamation of new concepts and optimizations that I learn.

You can refer to these in the [doc](doc) folder, where I have most of the technical details and design decisions.

This leads into the 3 limitations that I'm defining for this project (subject to change):

- No support for scrollback since I use [tmux](https://github.com/tmux/tmux) as my multiplexer

- No support for mouse input since I don't use the mouse in the terminal

- It'll really only be tested properly on macOS for now, this may change

### Technical Details

- The program uses `libvterm` to handle the terminal state machine

- A multi-threaded GLFW setup is used to handle the input and rendering

    - The main thread handles windowing and making rendering calls

    - The `pty` thread handles reading the child fork output

    - Minimal synchronization is needed or used to keep things fast

- Rendering is done using `freetype2` and complex math to position glyphs

### Building

The project uses [CMake](https://cmake.org/) as its build system. Install `cmake` and then run the following steps:

0. Define a configuration file, see [doc/config.md](doc/config.md) for more details.

1. `mkdir build && cd build`

2. `cmake ..`

3. `cd .. && cmake --build build --parallel`

This should produce a binary in your `build` folder which you can run with `./build/trap2`.

> Copyright (c) 2023, Aarnav Tale