tacterm 0.1.0

tacterm 0.1.0

Less GPU memory comes first

tacterm 0.1.0 is our first non-preview release: a Rio-based terminal focused on
lower GPU memory use, better tabs, and practical Windows and WSL improvements.

We reduced GPU memory reservations, removed unused rendering buffers, shared
render pipelines between panels, and made glyph textures start small and grow
only as needed. Existing glyphs survive growth without rebuilding the cache.

Development measurements on Windows with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 show
the effect of individual optimization stages:

Change and workload	Dedicated GPU memory before → after	Reduction
Allocation and lazy-storage changes; one maximized terminal at idle, Vulkan	398.6 → 234.5 MiB	164.1 MiB / 41%
Growing color-glyph atlases; 10 tabs with mixed-language text and emoji, DX12	410.7 → 282.7 MiB	128 MiB / 31%
Growing grayscale atlases; 10 text tabs at 1600 × 900 and 150% scaling, DX12	133.9 → 101.9 MiB	32 MiB / 24%

These are separate before/after comparisons from development, not additive
savings or a single upstream-versus-final-release benchmark. Each later stage
was compared with the already optimized previous build. Measurements used
Windows GPU process-memory counters, which include driver allocation pools;
the first comparison used four runs per version, and the two 10-tab comparisons
used two retained runs per version. Hardware, backend, window size and glyph
workload affect the result. Atlases retain their grown capacity, so demanding
workloads can still reach their previous maximum size. Lower memory use is not
a claim of higher FPS.

Tabs that look right and keep your place

• Better Unicode tab titles, with improved font fallback, alignment and shaping.
  Set tab-font-family and tab-font-size independently of terminal fonts.
• New tabs preserve window dimensions and font size, fixing progressive loss of
  usable terminal space.
• WSL tabs can inherit the focused tab's working directory, with automatic zsh
  integration.
• Configuration reloads retain platform-specific overrides.

Smoother presentation on Windows

Focused, visible fullscreen and maximized GPU windows continuously present
through the swapchain, reusing unchanged grid data. Timing fixes also preserve
fractional refresh rates. This is intended to provide steadier presentation on
VRR displays; it uses GPU resources while idle and still needs broader display
and GPU validation. Other window states keep event-driven rendering.

A separate home for tacterm

The executable is now tacterm / tacterm.exe in both source builds and release
archives, with its own application icon.

On first launch, if the tacterm configuration directory is absent, settings,
themes and assets are copied from Rio. The original files remain unchanged.
Later loads and edits use tacterm's copy, with no fallback to Rio.

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\tacterm
• macOS: ~/.config/tacterm
• Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tacterm, or ~/.config/tacterm

TACTERM_CONFIG_HOME overrides the destination; RIO_CONFIG_HOME only overrides
the import source. An existing destination, even empty, prevents reimport.
Logs and installer backups are excluded. Linked files require manual migration,
and absolute paths inside settings remain unchanged.

This replaces the shared-settings behavior of 0.1.0-alpha.1.

Thanks

Built on the work of Raphael Amorim and the Rio contributors. The integrated
upstream base is Rio 0.5.28. See FORK_STATUS.md in this release's source for
the implementation details, checks and remaining platform limitations.

Source: 7e8a12f
Changes: https://github.com/narma/tacterm/blob/7e8a12f8b29bf10e3915dd96dc56e220b18ca54c/FORK_STATUS.md

Downloads

Windows ZIPs, macOS Tacterm.app ZIPs, and Linux tar.gz archives are attached for x64 and ARM64. Each target is compiled on its native OS/architecture and checked with --version and --help. GUI/GPU sessions are not validated by these smoke checks.

• Windows binaries are unsigned and require the Microsoft Visual C++ v14 Redistributable for the matching architecture: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist
• macOS apps have an ad-hoc signature and are not notarized. See Apple's per-app opening instructions: https://support.apple.com/102445
• macOS requires 14+, Linux requires glibc 2.35+ and graphics/font libraries.
• The packaged command is tacterm. Settings use an independent tacterm directory with one-time import from Rio; some internal branding remains Rio-compatible.

Each archive contains its installation README, MIT license, and release-info.json. Check SHA256SUMS before installing. These archives do not modify your existing installation.

tacterm 0.1.0-alpha.1

tacterm 0.1.0-alpha.1

First-generation portable tacterm builds based on Rio 0.5.28.

Source: e04e229
Changes: https://github.com/narma/tacterm/blob/e04e22900cc82cac290ee327df120346b21fbd31/FORK_STATUS.md

Downloads

Windows ZIPs, macOS Tacterm.app ZIPs, and Linux tar.gz archives are attached for x64 and ARM64. Each target is compiled on its native OS/architecture and checked with --version and --help. GUI/GPU sessions are not validated by these smoke checks.

• Windows binaries are unsigned and require the Microsoft Visual C++ v14 Redistributable for the matching architecture: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist
• macOS apps have an ad-hoc signature and are not notarized. See Apple's per-app opening instructions: https://support.apple.com/102445
• macOS requires 14+, Linux requires glibc 2.35+ and graphics/font libraries.
• The packaged command is tacterm, but configuration paths and some internal branding remain Rio-compatible. Settings may be shared with Rio.

Each archive contains its installation README, MIT license, and release-info.json. Check SHA256SUMS before installing. These archives do not modify your existing installation.