parity-status.md

Post-port parity status

This document is the authoritative measured parity record for the .NET 10, NativeAOT, and Avalonia port. history/porting.md records the historical roadmap; this file records measured behavior after the Windows and Linux milestones.

Implementation, unit, headless Avalonia, protocol, process, package-structure, and NativeAOT gates completed before the final live UI matrix.

Completed platform baseline

Surface	Status
Windows process transport	ConPTY with input, resize, cancellation, restart, exit metadata, and x64/ARM64 NativeAOT
Linux process transport	Bundled forkpty relay with input, resize, cancellation, restart, exit metadata, and x64/ARM64 NativeAOT
macOS process transport	Same Unix forkpty host (osx-arm64/osx-x64); Apple clang dt-pty-host plus NativeAOT .app packaging on Darwin
Terminal engine	Built-in engine (Devolutions.Terminal.Core.TerminalEngine) on Windows, Linux, and macOS
Application shell	Multi-window broker, tabs, panes, settings editor, palettes, tray behavior, accessibility, clipboard, and notifications
Settings	Layering, dynamic profiles, fragments, source-generated JSON, Windows paths, XDG paths, macOS Application Support, and state persistence
Distribution	Windows x64/ARM64 MSIX and bundle; reproducible Linux x64/ARM64 tar, DEB, RPM, and AppImage packages with canonical freedesktop assets, licenses, checksums, inventory/SPDX SBOM, and DESTDIR-aware helpers; macOS NativeAOT .app and zip on Darwin, plus signed, notarized .dmg release artifacts from CI

Actions

The settings catalog contains 92 valid actions. MainWindow directly registers 91 and MultipleActions is implemented by ActionDispatcher. Global summon resolves broker-visible names case-insensitively, creates a named window when necessary, applies deterministic show/hide/focus behavior, and places quake windows across the selected monitor's top half. Dropdown duration is bounded to two seconds.

ToggleShaderEffects toggles the active terminal's bounded, deterministic Skia retro/scanline pass when experimental.retroTerminalEffect is enabled. Arbitrary experimental.pixelShaderPath HLSL remains unsupported and is not advertised as active.

Suggestions and QuickFix are registered but depend on data supplied by a shell provider. Their no-data result is explicit. Cross-window live-PTY transfer remains unavailable because public ConPTY and Linux PTY APIs do not provide a portable transactional handle-transfer contract.

Layouts and workspaces

The app captures and restores versioned window, tab, pane, profile, working-directory, title, color, geometry, launch-mode, active-pane, and zoom descriptors. wt save, --saved, OpenWorkspace, and Workspaces route through the authenticated broker and atomic state store. Restoration always creates new platform connections; live PTY handles are never serialized. Native Windows Terminal action-array layouts are rejected with a non-destructive diagnostic because they are not the same persistence contract.

Platform integration

Capability	Windows	Linux	Remaining acceptance
Open URI/file	Registered shell with argument-safe process launch	Portal preferred, xdg-open fallback, bounded execution, explicit errors	Complete for supported providers
Open current directory	Registered shell	Same portal/fallback service with directory validation	Complete for supported providers
Tray	Implemented	Implemented where the Avalonia desktop backend supports it	Capability report records that freedesktop has no reliable tray probe
Global summon/quake	Collision-safe RegisterHotKey, broker routing, mouse/current monitor placement, bounded dropdown, settings re-registration	Broker/manual summon works; cross-desktop global shortcut registration is explicitly unsupported because no reflection-free interactive GlobalShortcuts portal session provider is bundled	Windows and Linux quake/summon placement and visibility were verified live; virtual-desktop movement remains best-effort
Default terminal	Versioned native boundary; explicitly unavailable because OpenConsole handoff v3 proxy/stub and host are not bundled	Explicit, reversible xdg-terminal-exec preference and Debian alternatives helper	Windows package registration must wait for the real handoff implementation; other Linux distro registries are unsupported
Explorer integration	Packaged x64/ARM64 IExplorerCommand server for directory and directory-background verbs	N/A	Clean-machine package interaction remains a protected signing/release gate
Jump lists	Native helper generates visible profile tasks and refreshes after startup/settings saves	N/A	Clean-machine pinned-task verification remains a protected signing/release gate
System notifications	In-app plus packaged system toast; supported unpackaged AUMID/shortcut identity; validated broker activation	Accessible in-app notification plus portal-preferred/notify-send fallback	Linux notification actions remain unsupported
Package protocol	Manifest registration plus safe basic Windows activation normalization	.desktop handler plus safe basic activation	Command-bearing payloads remain intentionally rejected
Desktop metadata	N/A	Validated .desktop, actions, AppStream, six hicolor sizes, URI metadata, canonical tar/DEB/RPM/AppImage staging, registration, upgrade, and uninstall	Portal routing was verified; the WSLg image had no visible file-manager provider

Native Windows integrations preserve BuiltInComInteropSupport=false in the managed NativeAOT host. COM/default-terminal functionality belongs in architecture-matched native helpers with versioned, authenticated boundaries. The package gate validates helper PE architecture, SHA-256 manifests, Explorer registrations, and notices for both x64 and ARM64.

Windows environment construction

WindowsEnvironment mirrors Windows Terminal til::env when building a child process environment block.

• reloadEnvironmentVariables takes precedence over environment inheritance. When it is set, the block is regenerated from identity/session variables and the registry, and the host process environment is not inherited; inheriting it would reintroduce the stale values the reload exists to discard.
• Regeneration sources the ProgramFiles/CommonProgramFiles family from HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion using the process-bitness registry view, including the (x86), (Arm), and W6432 variants that apply to the running architecture, instead of copying the host values.
• Machine, user, volatile, and session registry environment keys are applied in Windows Terminal order, with environment-reference expansion and Path/LibPath/Os2LibPath concatenation.
• Profile environment overrides follow set_user_environment_var: values are expanded against the already-constructed environment, so %PATH%;C:\tools appends to the resolved PATH, and unknown %VAR% references are kept verbatim. TEMP and TMP are shortened with GetShortPathNameW, falling back to the original path when shortening is unavailable.
• An empty override value is a no-op, matching Windows Terminal, which never stores empty values. A null override value deletes the variable; this deletion is a Devolutions Terminal extension.
• Registry access is best-effort per key and per value: expected access and data errors are contained so a locked or malformed key cannot prevent terminal startup.

Terminal protocol and rendering

Area	Status	Remaining acceptance
Search	Implemented in the built-in engine; Core canonicalizes equivalent Unicode spellings and maps ZWJ/wide grapheme matches to cell ranges; built-in search anchors the selected match by logical-line ID and cell offset across reflow, duplicate lines, viewport scrolling, and bounded scrollback eviction, selecting the next surviving match if the selected line is lost	None
Grapheme/emoji	Built-in supports Hangul, Indic conjuncts, prepend, spacing marks, RI pairs, emoji modifiers/selectors, and emoji ZWJ sequences at arbitrary UTF-8 feed boundaries; bundled Noto Color Emoji provides deterministic Linux fallback	Unicode 16.0.0 GraphemeBreakTest.txt is pinned: all 369 terminal-representable rows pass ordered-cell and chunk-invariance checks. The other 724 rows are classified as unsuitable for terminal-cell assertions, not claimed as pure-segmenter passes; full UAX #29 conformance outside the tested subset remains unavailable
Row rendition	Built-in DECDWL/DECDHL parser, snapshots, logical cursor clipping, reflow preservation, and render transforms implemented	None
Sixel	Built-in decode/render, DECSDM scrolling/display behavior, retained cell geometry, and stable ownership implemented	None
OSC 1337	Built-in bounded inline decode/render and stable ownership implemented; non-inline transfer is explicitly rejected without I/O	None
ConEmu images	Bounded single-part st=0;sz= payloads decode into shared overlay metadata and render safely	Multipart payloads are explicitly rejected
Kitty graphics	Direct-medium RGBA/RGB/PNG transmissions with chunking, zlib, placements, crop, z-order, deletes, and query responses implemented; unsupported media and animation are rejected deterministically	File/shared-memory media and animation frames are intentional gaps
Image ownership	Stable logical-line anchors survive scrollback and reflow in main and alternate buffers and are removed on owning-line eviction	None
VT52	Output plus host cursor/PF/application-keypad encoding implemented	None
DRCS	Built-in parse/resource mapping, bounded snapshot masks, render planning, and downloaded-pixel rendering implemented	None
Extended keyboard	Built-in Kitty set/query/push/pop flags, CSI-u event bytes, modifyOtherKeys, Win32-input mode, and press/repeat/release encoding implemented	Kitty alternate-key reporting and associated-text reporting are not advertised
Shader effects	Optional deterministic, bounded Skia retro/scanline pass, toggleable per active terminal	Custom arbitrary HLSL/pixel-shader files are not loaded or advertised

The image regression matrix covers split protocol feeds, exact/over-limit decoded payloads and Sixel dimensions, Kitty continuation recovery and placement/crop/delete behavior, as well as mixed-protocol reflow, scrollback, eviction, reset, and renderer-cache isolation. It does not allocate a full 64-MiB assembled Kitty image in the test suite; decompression limits and per-sequence rejection are exercised directly.

The Unicode fixture contains 1,093 cases. Its 724 terminal-cell exclusions comprise 259 control-code, 78 unassigned-scalar, 238 orphan zero-width, 124 dangling-Prepend, and 25 blank-cell extender cases. CR/LF and C1 controls are tested as VT actions separately from Unicode segmentation. Core has no standalone pure grapheme segmenter; this result does not establish conformance for excluded cases or every possible printable string. Outside the fixture, Indic Extend still uses a category fallback rather than a complete Unicode 16 InCB property table.

Output bursts from the PTY read loop coalesce into one UI-thread invalidation drain per frame instead of one per 16 KiB chunk, and the cursor blink timer is damage-gated (no repaints for unfocused, steady-cursor, or hidden panes). The tools/Devolutions.Terminal.Bench harness measures the path (engine and control modes, 16 KiB chunks, medians over runs); an 8 MiB burst drains once per frame rather than 514 times. Concurrent host writes to ConPTY are serialized per sequence so query responses and key input cannot interleave mid-sequence, pinned by a live two-writer contract test.

Distribution and validation

The linux-arm64-hardware CI job runs on GitHub's native ubuntu-24.04-arm hosted runner. It rejects any machine whose uname -m is not aarch64 or arm64; emulation is not an accepted substitute. The job downloads the cross-built ARM64 tar, DEB, RPM, and AppImage artifacts and runs scripts/Test-LinuxArm64Runtime.sh. The gate executes the NativeAOT wt help/error paths from every extracted format, the built-in parser/engine, real forkpty input/resize/exit/cancellation/restart, broker concurrency, Linux shell profile and XDG paths, and disposable-root package install/upgrade/uninstall.

The AppImage ELF architecture and SquashFS payload are validated, and its embedded ARM64 wt is executed after unsquashfs. The AppImage AppRun launches the GUI host, so it is intentionally not executed by this non-UI, display-free gate; no FUSE mount is used.

Protected production release work is limited to signing and clean-machine install/upgrade/uninstall verification for Windows x64/ARM64 packages.

Final UI results

Windows x64 and packaged Linux x64 were validated with the built-in engine after the full non-UI matrix. The runs covered three independent tabs, split panes, focus/resize/close isolation, clipboard, fullscreen, maximize/restore, settings, workspace recreation, marks, summon/quake, truecolor, Unicode/CJK/emoji, row rendition, images, and shader effects.

• PowerShell 7 loaded PSReadLine normally. Windows PowerShell 5.1 on the test machine rejected its PSReadLine script module because of the machine's execution policy; ConPTY handles were confirmed as non-redirected.
• Built-in Linux rendered Sixel and inline OSC 1337 images.
• Bundled Noto Color Emoji fixed Linux emoji-ZWJ tofu. Portable settings icons and narrower content padding removed Linux settings-page clipping.
• Mark actions display notifications and colored scrollbar ticks.
• Linux Open CWD selected the portal/xdg-open path; the WSLg image did not provide a visible file-manager handler.
• Native Windows ARM64 and Linux ARM64 remain non-UI hardware/package gates; no ARM64 desktop was available in this session.
• macOS ARM64 NativeAOT .app packaging, dt parser, real forkpty, broker named-pipe length, and a live GUI-host process start were validated on Darwin. Signed, notarized .dmg release artifacts are produced in CI by scripts/Release-MacOsPackage.ps1 (see macos.md). Homebrew, global hotkeys, and default-terminal registration remain out of scope.