Install¶

Revenant releases provide Linux tarballs plus Debian and RPM packages. You can also build it directly from the repository.

The binary is revenant; every package and tarball also installs an xterm+ symlink pointing to it, so either name starts the same program.

System installation with Meson, the Debian package, or the RPM also installs a Revenant launcher and application icons in the standard freedesktop locations. The launcher identifies the window as XTerm so desktop environments associate it with Revenant's existing X11 application class.

Install a release¶

Each release provides revenant-<version>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz for x86_64 and aarch64, a Debian package, a Fedora RPM, and an Arch Linux package. The release page lists a SHA-256 for every file.

The x86_64 builds target the x86_64-v3 level (AVX2: Intel Haswell 2013 and later, AMD Zen 2019 and later); aarch64 builds target generic ARMv8. On an older CPU the terminal exits with an illegal-instruction error — build from source instead, or open an issue so the floor can be reconsidered.

sudo dnf install ./revenant-<version>-1.fc*.x86_64.rpm

sudo apt install ./revenant_<version>-1_amd64.deb

sudo pacman -U ./revenant-<version>-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

tar xzf revenant-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./revenant-<version>-linux-x86_64/revenant

Verify a download¶

Every release file carries a build-provenance attestation signed through GitHub's Sigstore instance. It proves the file was produced by the Revenant release workflow from a specific commit, rather than uploaded by hand. With the GitHub CLI installed:

gh attestation verify revenant_<version>-1_amd64.deb --repo toppk/revenant

A successful check prints the workflow, commit, and signer identity. Add --format json to see the full provenance statement, including the exact build inputs. The attestations are also listed at https://github.com/toppk/revenant/attestations.

Prerequisites¶

You need a C toolchain, Meson and Ninja, the X11 development libraries xterm itself uses (Xlib, Xt, Xaw, Xft, Xrender, and fontconfig), HarfBuzz, and Cairo 1.18 with its FreeType and Xlib backends. Building the terminal core additionally needs Zig, because libghostty-vt is built from Ghostty's source.

sudo dnf install gcc meson ninja-build zig \
  libX11-devel libXt-devel libXaw-devel libXft-devel libXrender-devel \
  fontconfig-devel cairo-devel harfbuzz-devel libxcb-devel libnotify-devel

sudo apt install build-essential meson ninja-build zig \
  libx11-dev libxt-dev libxaw7-dev libxft-dev libxrender-dev \
  libfontconfig1-dev libcairo2-dev libharfbuzz-dev libxcb1-dev libnotify-dev

Add pandoc to build and install the revenant(1) manual page. Without it the page is skipped; -Dman=enabled makes its absence a configure error, which is what the package recipes use.

Full build with libghostty-vt¶

The helper checks out the exact Ghostty revision this project is tested against, under the git-ignored upstream/ directory:

tools/fetch-libghostty
meson setup build-ghostty -Dlibghostty=enabled
meson compile -C build-ghostty
meson test -C build-ghostty
./build-ghostty/revenant

The Ghostty checkout is built into a private static libghostty-vt archive. Nothing from Ghostty is added to the Revenant repository.

If you already have a Ghostty checkout, point the build at it instead of fetching another:

meson setup build-ghostty -Dlibghostty=enabled \
  -Dlibghostty-source=/path/to/ghostty

UI-only stub build¶

For work on menus, fonts, resources, or geometry, a build without the terminal core starts faster and needs no Zig. It does not start a PTY or parse terminal data:

meson setup build -Dlibghostty=disabled
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build
./build/revenant

Build type¶

Builds default to Meson's debugoptimized type: debug information is kept, but the severe terminal-throughput penalty of -O0 is avoided. A build directory created before that became the default can be updated with:

meson configure build-ghostty -Dbuildtype=debugoptimized

Installing alongside xterm¶

Revenant carries xterm's XTerm app-defaults file as a reference but does not install it: overwriting /usr/share/X11/app-defaults/XTerm would conflict with a distribution's xterm package. When upstream xterm is installed, Xt loads that existing app-defaults file for Revenant automatically, which is exactly what you want — see X resources, explained.

Next¶

Whichever way you installed it, run the welcome report before the first real session. Revenant starts with xterm's defaults, and the traditional fixed bitmap font is often too small on a modern high-density display. The report says whether that applies to you and prints the resources that fix it:

revenant -welcome

Then continue with the first-run guide.