Install aide with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• aide

Project history

AIDE was originally written by Rami Lehti and Pablo Virolainen in 1999. The official project site records Richard van den Berg as maintainer from 2003 to 2010 and Hannes von Haugwitz taking over in October 2010.

The project has stayed close to classic Unix security-tool culture: C source releases, signed tarballs and git tags, a mailing list, manual pages, text configuration, and distribution packaging. Its release notes show gradual modernization, including the 0.17 configuration/reporting changes in 2021, PCRE2 and multithreaded checksum work in 0.18, and the 0.19 move from libmhash to libnettle plus newer hash algorithms and report formats.

The current public GitHub repository was created in 2019, but official project history predates GitHub by two decades. The official website lists stable release 0.19.3 with release date 2026-01-31.

Adoption history

AIDE is widely distributed through operating-system package repositories rather than primarily through language package managers. The official site lists downstream packages for Debian, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Homebrew, MacPorts, NixOS, OpenBSD, openSUSE/SUSE, Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora.

The input package facts also list apk, brew, Debian, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, Ubuntu, winget, and zypper package names, reinforcing that it is a cross-distribution system administration tool.

How it is used

Administrators initialize an AIDE database for a known-good system and later rerun AIDE to detect changed files, attributes, links, permissions, ownership, timestamps, and hashes. The official manual frames it as a way to detect tampering in key system binaries and other files after a suspected compromise.

AIDE does not use application credentials. Although `aide.conf` is central to operation, the sources checked did not document one portable config-file path across package managers, so this batch leaves config-file-location null.

Why package nerds care

AIDE is the kind of package that package managers exist to carry: old, security-sensitive, C-based, compiled with optional platform features, distributed through nearly every Unix family, and expected to integrate with local filesystem layout and administrator policy.

Its formula and distro packages matter because local defaults, compile-time options, hash libraries, and config paths can differ. For package nerds, AIDE is less about a fashionable CLI and more about the long tail of maintaining trustworthy system tools across operating systems.

Timeline

• 1999: AIDE originally written by Rami Lehti and Pablo Virolainen.
• 2003: Richard van den Berg begins maintaining the project, according to the official site.
• 2010: Hannes von Haugwitz takes over project maintenance.
• 2019: Current GitHub repository created and 0.16.x releases appear in official NEWS.
• 2021: Version 0.17 introduces major configuration and reporting changes.
• 2023: Version 0.18 adds PCRE2 and multithreaded checksum support.
• 2026: Official site lists stable release 0.19.3.

Related projects

• Tripwire-style host intrusion detection and file integrity monitoring tools.
• Linux distribution security packages and ports trees.
• Hash and filesystem attribute libraries such as nettle, PCRE2, ACL, xattr, SELinux, and e2fsattrs.

Sources

• https://aide.github.io/
• https://aide.github.io/doc/
• https://github.com/aide/aide/blob/master/AUTHORS
• https://github.com/aide/aide/blob/master/NEWS