Add a generation counter to the kitty graphics image storage. Every
content mutation (image transmit/replace, placement add, delete)
assigns the storage a fresh stamp, and every image is stamped when
it is added or replaced.
This solves two problems:
First, a retransmission of the same image ID with identical dimensions
was previously undetectable by anything comparing width, height, format,
and data length; the per-image stamp changes on every add/replace, so caches
keyed on it always see the change. Second, the dirty flag was the only
storage-wide signal, and it is also set by scrolling and resizing, which move
placements without changing contents. The generation is only bumped by content
mutations, so an unchanged value means the placement set and all
image data are identical and consumers can skip re-reading them,
recomputing only placement geometry.
The generation replaces Image.transmit_time entirely: newest-image
lookup by number, eviction ordering, and the renderer's texture
staleness checks all key on it now. A monotonic counter strictly
orders transmissions where Instant-based times could collide within
clock resolution (the renderer previously assumed equal timestamps
meant identical images), and this removes a syscall and an error
path per transmission.
Delete commands now only mark a mutation (dirty flag and
generation) when they actually remove something. A delete-all runs
on every screen clear, so previously every ESC [ 2 J dirtied the
image state even with no images stored. Eviction via setLimit also
now marks the state dirty, which it previously did not.
Both generations are exposed through libghostty-vt as
GHOSTTY_KITTY_GRAPHICS_DATA_GENERATION and
GHOSTTY_KITTY_IMAGE_DATA_GENERATION (uint64_t), and the headers now
document that stored image data is always post-inflate/post-decode:
COMPRESSION always reports NONE, FORMAT is never PNG, and DATA_PTR
is raw pixels ready for GPU upload.
uint64_t gen = 0;
ghostty_kitty_graphics_get(
graphics, GHOSTTY_KITTY_GRAPHICS_DATA_GENERATION, &gen);
if (gen == last_gen) return; // nothing changed, skip re-reads
Replace the ImageInfo and PlacementInfo sized structs and their
associated .info enum variants with a new _get_multi pattern that
batches multiple enum+pointer pairs into a single call. This avoids
struct ABI concerns (field order, padding, alignment, GHOSTTY_INIT_SIZED)
while preserving the single-call-crossing performance benefit for FFI
and Cgo callers.
Each _get_multi function takes an array of enum keys, an array of
output pointers, and an optional out_written parameter that reports
how many values were successfully written before any error. This
applies uniformly to all _get APIs: terminal_get, cell_get, row_get,
render_state_get, render_state_row_get, render_state_row_cells_get,
kitty_graphics_image_get, and kitty_graphics_placement_get.
The C example is updated to use compound-literal _get_multi calls,
and tests cover both success and error paths for every new function.
Demonstrates the sys interface for Kitty Graphics Protocol PNG
support. The example installs a PNG decode callback via
ghostty_sys_set, creates a terminal with image storage enabled,
and sends an inline 1x1 PNG image through vt_write. Snippet
markers are wired up to the sys.h doxygen docs.