zt-bench

Benchmark scripts and results for zt, a minimal terminal emulator in Zig.

Benchmarks

bench.sh — compares zt against st, xterm, alacritty, ghostty under Xvfb.

# Requires: hyperfine, Xvfb, terminals installed
./bench.sh

Measures startup time (hyperfine, 30 runs), throughput (4.7MB dense ASCII), and peak RSS. All tests pinned to 1 CPU core. Includes constrained mode (512MB RAM limit) to simulate RPi Zero 2W.

Latest results (Intel i5-12450H, 1 core, X11 :0)

Startup time (30 runs)

Terminal	Mean	vs zt
zt	5.3ms	1.0x
xterm	23ms	4.2x
st	43ms	8.1x
foot	46ms	8.6x
alacritty	123ms	23x
kitty	206ms	39x
ghostty	379ms	71x

Throughput: 4.7MB dense ASCII (5 runs)

Terminal	Time	MB/s	Peak RSS
zt	52ms	88	5.7 MB
foot	116ms	40	26 MB
st	160ms	29	25 MB
xterm	180ms	26	13 MB
alacritty	222ms	21	131 MB
kitty	306ms	15	146 MB
ghostty	598ms	8	229 MB

Throughput: 2.9MB TrueColor (5 runs)

Terminal	Time	MB/s	vs zt
zt	53ms	55	1.0x
foot	107ms	27	2.0x
xterm	129ms	23	2.4x
st	130ms	22	2.4x
alacritty	196ms	15	3.7x
kitty	280ms	10	5.3x
ghostty	534ms	5	10.1x

Throughput: 3.0MB Unicode/CJK (5 runs)

Terminal	Time	MB/s	vs zt
zt	58ms	52	1.0x
foot	126ms	24	2.2x
st	126ms	24	2.2x
xterm	142ms	21	2.5x
alacritty	200ms	15	3.4x
kitty	292ms	10	5.0x
ghostty	480ms	6	8.3x

Idle memory (PSS)

Terminal	RSS	PSS	vs zt
zt	5.0 MB	2.3 MB	1.0x
xterm	11 MB	4.3 MB	1.8x
foot	24 MB	10 MB	4.2x
st	25 MB	13 MB	5.3x
alacritty	107 MB	33 MB	14x
kitty	135 MB	51 MB	22x
ghostty	215 MB	87 MB	38x

Integration tests

Script	Purpose
test-xvfb.sh	Full integration test suite under Xvfb
test-xvfb-local.sh	Local version (no Docker)
test-apps.sh	Verify terminal apps (vim, nano, less, btop, etc.)
Dockerfile.test	Docker environment for CI

License

MIT

Disclaimer

This project uses AI-generated code (LLM). I do my best to review and test it, but I can't guarantee it's perfect. Please use it at your own risk.\n