Now when the agent reads images (which the tool now explicitly
advertises to agents that it is capable of; previously the tool said it
could only read text even though it can actually read images), we see
them in the thread, and also they are auto-expanded by default so you
can see them when scrolling through:
<img width="725" height="1019" alt="Screenshot 2026-01-06 at 2 57 11 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5c908bad-48f2-46c2-afaa-7f189a178e05"
/>
This also adds a visual regression test that verifies images render
correctly in the agent thread view.
Unlike our previous visual tests, this one only renders the agent panel,
not the entire Zed window.
The "screenshot" it generates (rendered to a Metal texture) is from
completely mocked/simulated data structures, and looks like this:
<img width="546" height="984" alt="Screenshot 2026-01-06 at 2 54 41 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/89a0921f-59e9-4dfe-94b2-4c3b625a851b"
/>
## Changes
- **New visual test**: `agent_thread_with_image` renders an
`AcpThreadView` containing a tool call with image content (the Zed app
icon)
- **Test infrastructure**: Added `StubAgentServer` helper and required
feature flags for visual testing
- **Test-support API**: Added `expand_tool_call()` method to
`AcpThreadView` to allow expanding tool calls for visual testing
- **Baseline screenshot**: Included baseline image showing the Zed logo
rendered in a tool call output
## How to run
```bash
# Run the visual tests
cargo run -p zed --bin visual_test_runner --features visual-tests
# Update baselines if UI intentionally changed
UPDATE_BASELINE=1 cargo run -p zed --bin visual_test_runner --features visual-tests
```
Release Notes:
- N/A
---------
Co-authored-by: Zed Zippy <234243425+zed-zippy[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Amp <amp@ampcode.com>
This fixes the auto-update failure by ensuring cargo-bundle picks 'zed'
as the first binary.
**Problem:** `cargo metadata` returns binaries alphabetically, so
`visual_test_runner` was coming before `zed`. When cargo-bundle looks
for the first binary to bundle (without `--bin`), it was picking
`visual_test_runner` - which doesn't exist in release builds because it
requires the `visual-tests` feature.
The previous fix (#46163) added `--bin zed` to explicitly select the
binary, but this caused cargo-bundle to use the binary name ('zed')
instead of the bundle metadata name ('Zed Nightly'), breaking
auto-updates.
**Fix:** Rename the binary to `zed_visual_test_runner` so it comes after
`zed` alphabetically. This restores the original bundle script behavior
that has worked for years.
Also reverts the `--bin zed` workaround from #46163.
Release Notes:
- N/A
## Screenshot testing
Adds visual testing infrastructure for GPUI that captures screenshots by
rendering directly to Metal textures. The
The screenshots end up in `target/visual_tests/` and look like this:
<img width="2560" height="1600" alt="workspace_with_editor2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/54112343-4af1-4347-9bab-f099de97dd29"
/>
<img width="2560" height="1600" alt="project_panel2"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0cd54b61-dace-4398-a28e-0b4d7c2968f6"
/>
### Key Features
- **Direct texture capture**: Screenshots are captured by rendering the
scene to a Metal texture and reading pixels directly from GPU memory,
rather than using ScreenCaptureKit
- **No visibility requirements**: Windows don't need to be visible on
screen since we read directly from the render pipeline
- **Deterministic output**: Captures exactly what GPUI renders, not what
the OS compositor displays
- **No permissions needed**: Doesn't require Screen Recording permission
like ScreenCaptureKit would
### Running the Visual Tests
```bash
# Run visual tests (compares against baselines)
cargo run -p zed --bin visual_test_runner --features visual-tests
# Update baseline images (when UI intentionally changes)
UPDATE_BASELINE=1 cargo run -p zed --bin visual_test_runner --features visual-tests
# View the captured screenshots
open target/visual_tests/
```
### Implementation
- `Window::render_to_image()` - Renders the current scene to a texture
and returns an `RgbaImage`
- `MetalRenderer::render_to_image()` - Core implementation that renders
to a non-framebuffer-only texture
- `VisualTestAppContext` - Test context that uses real macOS platform
rendering
- `VisualTestAppContext::capture_screenshot()` - Synchronous screenshot
capture using direct texture rendering
### Usage
```rust
let mut cx = VisualTestAppContext::new();
let window = cx.open_window(...)?;
let screenshot: RgbaImage = cx.capture_screenshot(window.into())?;
```
Release Notes:
- N/A
---------
Co-authored-by: Amp <amp@ampcode.com>
Lychee is a [Rust based](https://lychee.cli.rs) async parallel link
checker.
I ran it against the codebase to suss out stale links and fixed those
up.
There's currently 2 remaining cases that I don't know how to resolve:
1. https://flathub.org/apps/dev.zed.Zed - nginx is giving a 502 bad
gateway
2.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg
- I don't want to mess with the CI pipeline in this PR.
Once again, I'll punt to the Docs Czar to see if this gets incorporated
into CI later.
---
## Running `lychee` locally:
```
cargo binstall -y lychee
lychee .
```
---
Release Notes:
- N/A
Signed-off-by: mrg <miguelraz@ciencias.unam.mx>
These have been migrated to the README.md
[here](https://github.com/zed-industries/release_notes). These don't
need to be public. Putting them in the same repo where we draft
(`release_notes`) means less jumping around and allows us to include
additional information we might not want to make public.
Release Notes:
- N/A
@ConradIrwin No longer needed the issue appears to be fully resolved
after moving to MacOS Tahoe as the latest instead of only in dev beta
Release Notes:
- N/A
# Summary
Today, Zed uses Mold on Linux, but Wild can be significantly faster.
On my machine, Wild is 14% faster at a whole-tree clean build, 20%
faster on an incremental build with a minimal change, and makes no
measurable effect on runtime performance of tests.
However, Wild's page says it's not yet ready for production, so it seems
to early to switch for production and CI builds.
This PR keeps using Mold in CI and lets developers choose in their own
config what linker to use. (The downside of this is that after landing
this change, developers will have to do some local config or it will
fall back to the default linker which may be slower.)
[Wild 0.6 is out, and their announcement has some
benchmarks](https://davidlattimore.github.io/posts/2025/09/23/wild-update-0.6.0.html).
cc @davidlattimore from Wild, just fyi
# Tasks
- [x] Measure Wild build, incremental build, and runtime performance in
different scenarios
- [x] Remove the Linux linker config from `.cargo/config.toml` in the
tree
- [x] Test rope benchmarks etc
- [x] Set the linker to Mold in CI
- [x] Add instructions to use Wild or Mold into `linux.md`
- [x] Add a script to download Wild
- [x] Measure binary size
- [x] Recommend Wild from `scripts/linux`
# Benchmarks
| | wild 0.6 (rust 1.89) | mold 2.37.1 (1.89) | lld (rust 1.90) | wild
advantage |
| -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| clean workspace build | 176s | 184s | 182s | 5% faster than mold |
| nextest run workspace after build | 137s | 142s | 137s | in the noise?
|
| incremental rebuild | 3.9s | 5.0s | 6.6s | 22% faster than mold |
I didn't observe any apparent significant change in runtime performance
or binary size, or in the in-tree microbenchmarks.
Release Notes:
- N/A
---------
Co-authored-by: Mateusz Mikuła <oss@mateuszmikula.dev>
Added blank line in front of 2 image tags so markdown renders correctly
in zed. (Previously, images were skipped. They are also skipped in zed
if there are leading spaces in front of img tag.)
Updated text in 3 alt tags.
Fixed 1 typo.
Release Notes:
- N/A
Found duplicate `postgresql` package in installation command. Uncertain
whether it should be `postgresql-contrib` or `postgresql-client`, but
neither appears necessary.
Release Notes:
- N/A
Also removed the symbolicate script, which we could replace with a
`minidump-stackwalk` wrapper that downloaded sources/unstripped binaries
from github releases if that's helpful for folks.
Release Notes:
- N/A
- I believe this is caused by metal not being found due to it being on
the XcodeBeta path, not sure if there's a better fix for this but it'll
work until 26 is the latest release
Release Notes:
- N/A
- we are about to drop Zed for MINGW64 because `crash-handler` uses a
symbol which is not presented in `msvcrt.dll`
- mention MSYS2 docs page and CLANGARM64 environment
Release Notes:
- N/A
- [x] Handle uploading minidumps from the remote_server
- [x] Associate minidumps with panics with some sort of ID (we don't use
session_id on the remote)
- [x] Update the protobufs and client/server code to request panics
- [x] Upload minidumps with no corresponding panic
- [x] Fill in panic info when there _is_ a corresponding panic
- [x] Use an env var for the sentry endpoint instead of hardcoding it
Release Notes:
- Zed now generates minidumps for crash reporting
---------
Co-authored-by: Max Brunsfeld <maxbrunsfeld@gmail.com>
Simplify docs for mac/linux/windows by consolidating the backend
dependencies (collaboration) docs into local-collaboration.md. Most
users building zed will not need to do this -- streamline them into
getting setup to build the zed client app first.
Release Notes:
- N/A
Anikesh kumar
