| ▲ | Show HN: Boo – Screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty(github.com) |
| 55 points by kylecarbs 7 hours ago | 20 comments |
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| ▲ | stereo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| You've obviously written this because screen wasn't doing the right thing, but your readme only explains that it's a "young project, not a drop-in GNU screen replacement". What are its advantages over screen or tmux? |
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| ▲ | kylecarbs 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair. Adding a section for this now. screen actually works the same way architecturally: it parses all output through its own built-in terminal emulator and redraws from that state on reattach. But that emulator is decades old and lags far behind what modern programs emit. Whatever it doesn't understand gets dropped or mangled on redraw. boo swaps that layer for libghostty-vt, Ghostty's VT core, so the saved state matches what your terminal would actually display, and terminal queries get answered while detached so TUIs don't hang unattended. tmux is great, it was just never the model I wanted. I really liked screen's simplicity, sessions and a prefix key and nothing else to learn, and boo keeps exactly that. | | |
| ▲ | dgnemo 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | can you share more on the tmux model vs boo? | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Tmux is n clients to 1 server. Screen is 1 server to 1 client. In screen each client session is a fork of the screen server. In tmux there's one server and many client forks iirc. | | |
| ▲ | gguingff 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | this is incorrect. you can have multiple clients using screen -x instead of screen -a | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say you couldn't have multiple clients, I said clients and servers are the same process forked. Or did someone add distinct client/server support to screen finally? I know theres a lot of stuff bolted onto screen over the years but I wasn't aware they dropped forked servers for the tmux model... | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Did a bit of digging; the first client gets forked to create the "server". The forked server then detaches and runs in the background. You're right that -x creates an entirely new, separate client process, unrelated to the OG client or the forked server. Without -x though it works as originally described. Edit: gnu screen 1.0 was originally released in 1987. The -x flag was released in screen 3.0 in the 90s. TIL |
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| ▲ | kylecarbs 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I want boo to be a screen replacement, not a tmux replacement. tmux gives you a whole workspace: layout, scrollback, copy mode, a status bar. screen's appeal was that it did almost none of that: sessions, a prefix key, done. boo keeps that model and swaps the emulation for libghostty so reattach actually redraws correctly. They also compose: a boo session is just a PTY running a program, so you can run tmux inside one if you want. | | |
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| ▲ | ac29 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Been using zmx for a few months and love it: https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx/ Very similar, based on libghostty |
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| ▲ | boltguo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Really dig the minimal approach here. Swapping the backend to libghostty is exactly the kind of clean architecture we need. Going to test drive this today. |
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| ▲ | johnfn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think Cmux is the incumbent in the "screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty" - any key differentiators here? https://cmux.com/ |
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| ▲ | kylecarbs 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Cmux is a standalone terminal. Boo is a command-line similar to screen, backed by libghostty for terminal emulation. |
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| ▲ | darkteflon 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Installed using the curl-to-bash on Sequoia and I’m getting “error: ReadOnlyFileSystem” on ‘boo new’. Can’t see any open issues on gh and nothing in the readme. Definitely interested in something like this - love ghostty and I’ve been finding Zellij a bit crashy recently (plus I don’t really need tabs). |
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| ▲ | relyks 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How have you been using Zellij? It's been working great for me | |
| ▲ | kylecarbs 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'll take a look at this now. Thanks for reporting! | | |
| ▲ | kylecarbs 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just published v0.5.13 which should fix this! It seems to be a path issue. Now boo falls back to tmpdir for storing sockets. |
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| ▲ | asar 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| this looks nice! i've been using herdr the last couple of weeks as a terminal multiplexer for agents, which works amazingly well. |
