term-session-server

The server half of term-session: a gateway daemon that hosts every channel's PTY in one process and broadcasts each session to every attached terminal.

Library only. This crate provides the server-side library for the supported functionality; it ships no binary of its own. The runnable binary is currently provided by the term-session crate, which depends on this library. Like the rest of the term-session stack, it reuses much of term-wm's internal machinery (in particular the PTY engine) — but it does not produce the window manager.

The gateway (run_gateway) supervises every channel in one process:

• resolves the logical gateway name (term-wm/<user>/gateway, overridable via TERM_WM_GATEWAY) and binds a single IPC endpoint;
• on Attach, binds a connection to a channel (server-assigned conn_id — identity is never client-supplied);
• on Spawn, materializes (or joins) the channel's PTY; a live session is reused idempotently, an exited one respawns with the stored command template;
• broadcasts each chunk of PTY output to all subscribed clients — this is what lets multiple terminals show the same live session;
• accepts keystrokes, mouse events, and pastes from any client and feeds them into the shared PTY;
• constrains PTY geometry to the smallest size across connected clients and broadcasts resize notifications;
• finalizes every subscriber's output stream when the PTY child exits;
• reaps idle channels (zero clients + exited session) to bound memory, with tombstone double-checked locking so concurrent attaches never split a channel;
• KillChannel / KillClient authoritatively evict connections and cancel their tasks; ShutdownGateway seals the gateway and tears down every session's process tree before exiting.

Platform notes

• macOS & Linux: The gateway detaches into its own session via setsid(), so it survives terminal closure and client disconnects. Killing a session terminates its entire process group (SIGTERM → SIGKILL escalation), so background jobs are not orphaned.
• Windows: The gateway auto-daemonizes with CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP | DETACHED_PROCESS (no console) and disinherited standard handles. PTY children are contained in a Win32 Job Object (spawned CREATE_SUSPENDED, assigned to the job, then resumed) so the whole process tree terminates on kill.

Designed to work alongside term-wm: run term-wm as a child process inside term-session for persistent, detachable workspaces. Usable from any terminal program.

See the main term-session crate for usage.