Ratatui Core

ratatui-core is the core library of the ratatui project, providing the essential building blocks for creating rich terminal user interfaces in Rust.

Why `ratatui-core`?

The ratatui-core crate is split from the main ratatui crate to offer better stability for widget library authors and advanced integrations. Widget libraries should generally depend on ratatui-core, benefiting from a stable API and reducing the need for frequent updates.

Most applications, on the other hand, should depend on the main ratatui crate, which includes built-in widgets, backend re-exports, and higher-level setup helpers.

In practice:

Use ratatui to build applications.
Use ratatui-core to implement widgets, backend integrations, or other code that needs the core rendering and layout contracts directly.

Installation

Add ratatui-core to your Cargo.toml:

cargo add ratatui-core

Crate Organization

ratatui-core is part of the Ratatui workspace that was modularized in version 0.30.0 to improve compilation times, API stability, and dependency management. This crate provides the foundational types and traits that other crates in the workspace depend on.

When to use ratatui-core:

Building widget libraries that implement Widget or StatefulWidget
Building custom integrations on top of Ratatui's core rendering contracts
You want minimal dependencies and faster compilation times
You need maximum API stability (core types change less frequently)

When to use the main ratatui crate:

Building applications
You want built-in widgets, backend re-exports, and setup helpers such as ratatui::run

For detailed information about the workspace organization, see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community! Please see our CONTRIBUTING guide for more details on how to get involved.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.