We run on a 6 month release cycle as noted in our release notes. The 1.4 release was scheduled for the last week of September (~a week ago), but it had to be pushed to October due to personal family travel as well as some lagging localization PRs. After we release in October, there won't be another release until March.
I'm actually working on the 1.4 changelog right now and I put out a call for help for the translations yesterday on X. The only risk now is that my 3 year old became very sick today and my wife is out of town, so I'm solo parent and that's now impacting things.
There's been literally over a thousand changes on main between March and today and if you look at our commit history we're extremely active with commits almost every day. So I'm not sure what anyone is trying to imply by sharing this with this title, but please don't read into it in any weird way.
I'll be blunt: I don't care about Ghostty and how things are delayed. From what I see from GitHub is people are pushing localization and your child is sick.
I'll be personally a much happier internet stranger if your child feels better and gets well as soon as possible. Nobody's world will crumble if Ghostty updates a couple days or weeks late.
Family is always first, and these are precious days, hope (s)he gets soon as soon as possible and all of you get a sound and peaceful sleep.
Other comments have pointed out that this seems fine, and that the project has commits as recent as 4 hours ago.
This bizarre measure of software, that it needs to constantly be getting new releases and be under constant change is ridiculous. Good things are stable enough that they don't require 900 tiny releases. This is often a good measure of mature software, the fact that it doesn't change endlessly.
I made this comment not because I expect software to evolve constantly and with quick pace, but because I feared about something serious happened to the developer, i.e. bus factor.
A software package I use which needs constant maintenance is abandoned once. Now, new people are trying to keep things running and I'm trying to help as much as I can. We still can't reach the original developer. We know he's alive, but, he's not responding to anything.
On the other hand, there are software packages which only get maintenance love (i.e. bug fixes and minimal effort to keep it running on newer systems), or just sit there (i.e. vbindiff, with initial commit 32 years ago and last commit 9 years ago). I'm fine either way.
In short: I don't care about the project, I care about people behind it to be in good shape. I don't even use Ghostty. I'm a Konsole guy.
We're, like, in a post-AI society. If a project hasn't cut a release in the last 6 hours, it's abandoned. And if that release doesn't break existing installations, it's not developing new features quickly enough.
Do you like releases specifically? As in the process of downloading and installing an update? I mean I agree, it is indeed satisfying to watch progress bar and feel you’re getting something new in “about 14 minutes (10.2 MB/s)”. /srs
But rationally, we want new features (which is a somewhat finite resource for a terminal emulator) and bugfixes (which only happen if there are bugs). It’s okay for an app to receive no updates if v1.0.6 from 2012 is still working fine.
I avoided wezterm for a long time because I thought the name was dumb. It's my favorite terminal emulator now. I have a nice consistent experience across macos and linux - which is not something I could ever achieve with ghostty.
I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though.
Creator of Ghostty here.
We run on a 6 month release cycle as noted in our release notes. The 1.4 release was scheduled for the last week of September (~a week ago), but it had to be pushed to October due to personal family travel as well as some lagging localization PRs. After we release in October, there won't be another release until March.
I'm actually working on the 1.4 changelog right now and I put out a call for help for the translations yesterday on X. The only risk now is that my 3 year old became very sick today and my wife is out of town, so I'm solo parent and that's now impacting things.
There's been literally over a thousand changes on main between March and today and if you look at our commit history we're extremely active with commits almost every day. So I'm not sure what anyone is trying to imply by sharing this with this title, but please don't read into it in any weird way.
I'll be blunt: I don't care about Ghostty and how things are delayed. From what I see from GitHub is people are pushing localization and your child is sick.
I'll be personally a much happier internet stranger if your child feels better and gets well as soon as possible. Nobody's world will crumble if Ghostty updates a couple days or weeks late.
Family is always first, and these are precious days, hope (s)he gets soon as soon as possible and all of you get a sound and peaceful sleep.
Take care!
Health and family first. :) Keep up the great work at a pace that is sustainable and brings you joy.
> So I'm not sure what anyone is trying to imply by sharing this with this title
It feels like this submission might be a violation of HN guidelines for editorialization.
I’m also in the camp of people who don’t want frequent updates to my terminal. Every 6 months is more than enough for me. :)
Sorry to hear about your kid, I hope they feel better soon
Other comments have pointed out that this seems fine, and that the project has commits as recent as 4 hours ago.
This bizarre measure of software, that it needs to constantly be getting new releases and be under constant change is ridiculous. Good things are stable enough that they don't require 900 tiny releases. This is often a good measure of mature software, the fact that it doesn't change endlessly.
How often does `rxvt-unicode` change?
It's a TERMINAL, folks.
I made this comment not because I expect software to evolve constantly and with quick pace, but because I feared about something serious happened to the developer, i.e. bus factor.
A software package I use which needs constant maintenance is abandoned once. Now, new people are trying to keep things running and I'm trying to help as much as I can. We still can't reach the original developer. We know he's alive, but, he's not responding to anything.
On the other hand, there are software packages which only get maintenance love (i.e. bug fixes and minimal effort to keep it running on newer systems), or just sit there (i.e. vbindiff, with initial commit 32 years ago and last commit 9 years ago). I'm fine either way.
In short: I don't care about the project, I care about people behind it to be in good shape. I don't even use Ghostty. I'm a Konsole guy.
We're, like, in a post-AI society. If a project hasn't cut a release in the last 6 hours, it's abandoned. And if that release doesn't break existing installations, it's not developing new features quickly enough.
>...that it needs to constantly be getting new releases...
Well, "needs" is strong, but I do like releases, at least if there is good QA done before the release.
> but I do like releases
Do you like releases specifically? As in the process of downloading and installing an update? I mean I agree, it is indeed satisfying to watch progress bar and feel you’re getting something new in “about 14 minutes (10.2 MB/s)”. /srs
But rationally, we want new features (which is a somewhat finite resource for a terminal emulator) and bugfixes (which only happen if there are bugs). It’s okay for an app to receive no updates if v1.0.6 from 2012 is still working fine.
Seems to be pretty on-par with their release history? Big #.0 updates every ~8 months, quick bug fixes after
superlogical was announced in july https://mitchellh.com/writing/superlogical
Yet, the last commit is 4 hours ago. I'd not raise any alarms.
They haven’t cut a release since March. There have been updates almost every day.
I avoided wezterm for a long time because I thought the name was dumb. It's my favorite terminal emulator now. I have a nice consistent experience across macos and linux - which is not something I could ever achieve with ghostty.
https://wezterm.org/
I've moved back to Kitty and now I wonder why I ever left! Kovid not only consistently innovates in the terminal space, he also helps set standards. It really is a great, non-commercial project that I think everyone should support. I'd love if they a better icon on Mac OS though.
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty