ponysay-rust

A native Rust rewrite of the ponysay command and renderer, maintained in jcpsimmons/ponysay-rust. It uses the original ponies, aliases, quotes, balloon styles, and .pony format. Artwork is compiled into the executable. Running it requires neither Python nor Homebrew.

This is an independent fork of erkin/ponysay, not a transfer of the original project's ownership. Original Python source and history remain available for reference and asset tooling.

Install

git clone https://github.com/jcpsimmons/ponysay-rust.git
cd ponysay-rust
./install-rust.sh
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
ponysay -f twilight 'Friendship is magic!'
ponythink -f luna 'Native ponies.'

The script builds with the committed Cargo lockfile, installs ~/.local/bin/ponysay-rust, and creates ponysay and ponythink aliases. Pass another prefix as the first argument to change the installation directory. Rust 1.85 or newer is required to build. The native binary carries its assets with it and works outside the checkout.

If your shell startup contains an absolute Homebrew path, replace that specific invocation with "$HOME/.local/bin/ponysay". Changing PATH alone cannot override an absolute path. After testing the replacement, brew uninstall ponysay removes the old package.

Homebrew

The separately named formula lives in our own tap:

brew install jcpsimmons/tap/ponysay-rust
ponysay-rust -f twilight "Hello from Rust"
ponythink-rust "A thought"

The tap installs namespaced commands that can coexist with Homebrew's original ponysay. To opt into the conventional names, put the formula's aliases first:

export PATH="$(brew --prefix ponysay-rust)/libexec/bin:$PATH"

This is third-party tap distribution, not inclusion in homebrew/core. Homebrew's separately named fork policy permits a distinct identity, but core admission still requires the package to meet its release, adoption, maintenance and licensing criteria.

Use

ponysay 'A random pony says this.'
printf '%s\n' 'Input from a pipe' | ponysay
ponysay -f pinkie -f twilight 'Choose one of these ponies.'
ponysay -q twilight
ponysay -l
ponysay -A
ponysay -B
ponysay -b round -f twilight 'Custom balloon style'
ponysay -W 40 'A message wrapped to fit.'
ponysay -W n -- 'Literal text: C:\ponies, $HOME, and \-'
ponysay --no-color -f twilight 'Plain output'
ponysay -i -f twilight
ponysay -o -f twilight

Messages are literal text. Backslashes, shell-looking strings, quotes, and dollar signs are never interpreted as code or pony-template directives. Unicode width and ANSI escapes are handled by the renderer. NO_COLOR disables color. A broken output pipe exits cleanly.

Custom assets in $XDG_DATA_HOME/ponysay, ~/.local/share/ponysay, or directories given with --data-dir / PONYSAY_DATA_DIR override the bundled assets. Use the subdirectories ponies, extraponies, ttyponies, extrattyponies, quotes, and balloons. A direct .pony, .say, or .think path also works.

Compatibility

The native version implements speech/thought balloons, normal and extra pony collections, aliases, quotes, metadata, custom artwork and styles, multiline and wrapped messages, compact messages, pony-only output, and Linux-console artwork. Run ponysay --help for the supported CLI.

Python extension/configuration execution hooks, automatic PNG conversion, Linux KMS palette programming, spelling correction, the metadata restriction language, and legacy per-component color override flags are not implemented by the native CLI. Unsupported options produce an error. ponysay-tool remains original Python asset tooling; it is not installed by the Rust installer. Python is never used as a runtime fallback.

Homebrew's 3.0.3 Python archive emits SyntaxWarning messages about invalid escape sequences on recent Python. This fork already contains the source-level escape fix, and the Rust executable removes Python from the startup path entirely.

Verify and benchmark

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --locked --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --locked
cargo build --release --locked
python3 rust/tests/cli.py
python3 rust/tests/render_parity.py --include-tty
python3 rust/tests/benchmark.py --baseline /path/to/python/ponysay

The benchmark runs complete processes, captures output, alternates the two implementations, and records all samples plus environment details in rust/benchmarks/startup.json. It measures command latency, including interpreter startup and rendering, rather than timing only a selected Rust function.

Measured on macOS ARM64, 30 alternating runs per workload after two warmups. These are warm-cache process medians, including startup and rendering.

Raw samples and the exact flags are in startup.json. Wrapping has native Unicode behavior; this timing is not a claim of byte-identical output for every historical Python wrapping edge case.

Visual verification

Actual PTY captures were rendered with a terminal emulator and inspected for speech, thought and embedded balloons. These are renderings of executable output, not screenshots of a desktop Terminal application.

• Speech and literal backslashes
• Thoughts and multiple lines
• Embedded balloon

The raw .ansi captures and the generator rust/tests/visual.py are included.

The test suite covers 1,154 bundled pony paths and all eight balloon styles. The differential harness makes 1,204 direct comparisons to the retained Python renderer and checks two known upstream TTY rendering failures against their equivalent xterm artwork. All 1,206 checks pass. Normal wrapping matches; Unicode width, minimum-height behavior, and long-word wrapping include documented fixes.

License and attribution

The program is GPL-3.0-or-later; see COPYING, LICENSE, and CREDITS. Original authors include Erkin Batu Altunbaş, Mattias Andrée, Elis Axelsson, Sven-Hendrik Haase, Jan Alexander Steffens, and Kyah Rindlisbacher. The Rust implementation preserves original image metadata and credits.

Individual artwork retains its original licensing conditions. Some assets are marked FREE: no; bundling them does not relicense them or grant commercial redistribution rights. Consult each image's metadata and the original license files before redistributing an artwork collection.