Devolutions Terminal

A cross-platform terminal emulator implemented in C# on .NET 10, published with NativeAOT, and rendered with Avalonia 12 / Skia:

• ConPTY on Windows and a real forkpty transport on Linux and macOS
• Azure Cloud Shell for remote Azure sessions
• selectable built-in or Ghostty VT engine
• Windows Terminal-compatible settings.json, actions, keybindings, and dt CLI

This is the Devolutions Terminal source tree. Projects, namespaces, and the GUI host use Devolutions.Terminal.*. The CLI executable is dt.

Build and run

dotnet test Devolutions.Terminal.slnx
dotnet run --project src/Devolutions.Terminal

NativeAOT publish

dotnet publish src/Devolutions.Terminal -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

The native executable is written to src/Devolutions.Terminal/bin/Release/net10.0/win-x64/publish/Devolutions.Terminal.exe.

macOS NativeAOT app bundles (Darwin only):

scripts/Build-MacOsPackage.sh osx-arm64 0.1.0 artifacts/packages
bash scripts/Test-MacOsPackage.sh osx-arm64 artifacts/packages/*.zip

Linux x64 and ARM64 NativeAOT packages are built on Linux with:

scripts/Build-LinuxPackage.sh linux-x64 0.1.0 artifacts/packages all
scripts/Build-LinuxPackage.sh linux-arm64 0.1.0 artifacts/packages all
bash scripts/Test-LinuxPackage.sh linux-x64 artifacts/packages/*-linux-x64.*

The builder emits .tar.gz, .deb, .rpm, .AppImage, and .sha256 files. Every format consumes the same normalized /opt/devolutions-terminal payload and /usr desktop integration layout. SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH controls package timestamps.

After extracting a tarball at the filesystem root:

sudo /opt/devolutions-terminal/linux/Install-LinuxDesktopIntegration.sh install
/opt/devolutions-terminal/linux/Install-LinuxDesktopIntegration.sh register-protocol
/opt/devolutions-terminal/linux/Install-LinuxDesktopIntegration.sh set-default-terminal

MSIX packages

.\src\Devolutions.Terminal.Package\Scripts\Build-Packages.ps1

Development signing, trust, install, validation, and uninstall commands are in src/Devolutions.Terminal.Package/README.md.

Settings and engines

Settings are stored at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Devolutions\Terminal\settings.json on Windows, under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/devolutions-terminal on Linux (usual ~/.config fallback), and at ~/Library/Application Support/Devolutions/Terminal/ on macOS. Set WT_BASE_SETTINGS_PATH to use a directory for settings.json and state.json (same contract as Devolutions' Windows Terminal distribution). Set DTERM_SETTINGS_PATH (or WT_DOTNET_SETTINGS_PATH) to load a specific settings file. On Windows, WT_PARENT_WINDOW_HANDLE embeds the window as a child of that HWND. alwaysShowTabs: false hides the tab row when only one tab is open.

Set "experimental.terminalEngine": "ghostty" to use the pinned libghostty-vt engine globally. A profile can override it with "builtin" or "ghostty". ConPTY remains the Windows process transport for both engines.

The compiled-XAML settings editor is documented in docs/settings-editor.md.

Architecture

Devolutions.Terminal.Core         VT parser + text buffer + terminal engine
Devolutions.Terminal.Ghostty      NativeAOT-safe libghostty-vt engine adapter
Devolutions.Terminal.Render       Immutable plans + HarfBuzz/Skia glyph renderer
Devolutions.Terminal.Connection   ConPTY + Linux PTY + Azure Cloud Shell
Devolutions.Terminal.Settings     Layered Windows Terminal-compatible JSON settings
Devolutions.Terminal.Control      Avalonia TermControl renderer
Devolutions.Terminal.App   Tabs, title bar, panes, actions, window behavior
Devolutions.Terminal       NativeAOT executable and composition root

The measured remaining parity contract is in docs/parity-status.md. Architecture decisions are recorded in docs/decisions. Renderer contracts are documented in docs/renderer.md. Control, clipboard, IME, and accessibility contracts are documented in docs/control-accessibility.md. Advanced VT protocols are documented in docs/advanced-vt-protocols.md. Azure Cloud Shell is documented in docs/azure-cloud-shell.md. Build and release gates are documented in docs/release.md.

Compatibility inventory

Safety and compatibility settings

Large or multi-line pastes requiring confirmation are cancelled unless explicitly approved. The application prompts asynchronously; closing the prompt cancels the paste. Embedded controls without a confirmation handler also cancel warned pastes.

warning.confirmOnClose applies to user-initiated window, tab, pane, and bulk close actions. never skips confirmation; always confirms closing any running session; automatic confirms when an action closes more than one running session (the legacy confirmCloseAllTabs behavior). Already-exited sessions and automatic process-exit cleanup never prompt.

PTY input is queued in order off the UI thread, with limits of 256 pending writes and 4 MiB (including framing on Unix). Overflow rejects the entire new write and reports an error rather than blocking or silently dropping input. Async writes complete after transport delivery; caller cancellation skips writes not yet started. Cancelling an in-flight write terminates its session because input may have been partially delivered and Unix framing cannot safely resume. Closing a blocked Unix session has a one-second grace period before host termination; undelivered input is reported.

The editor disables options that are currently retained only for settings-file compatibility: compatibility.textMeasurement, compatibility.ambiguousWidth, experimental.detectURLs, and disableAnimations. The terminal engine determines text measurement and character widths. Plain-text URL detection is not implemented; explicit OSC 8 hyperlinks remain supported. Window/pane animation effects are not configurable through disableAnimations.

Broker retries share active requests and retain completed responses for at least five seconds after completion. Admission is bounded at 128 active requests and 1024 total retained requests. When full, new requests receive an explicit unavailable response without executing their action; existing retries still join their original operation.

The port tracks Windows Terminal settings, actions, VT dispatch, command line, and settings-page surfaces in compat/windows-terminal.json. Tests use that checked-in snapshot. Regenerating it requires a separate Microsoft Windows Terminal C++ checkout:

dotnet run --project tools/Devolutions.Terminal.PortInventory -- <windows-terminal-checkout> compat/windows-terminal.json