Install c-kermit with Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• ckermit.ini
• kermit
• kermit-sshsub

Project history

The Kermit Project dates itself to 1981, and the C-Kermit tutorial says C-Kermit was first written at Columbia University's Kermit Project in 1985. The 10.0 tutorial describes ten major releases, while the 9.0 page identifies C-Kermit 9.0.302 as an open-source release from 20 August 2011.

The project moved into a new open-source era after Columbia: the C-Kermit 9.0 page says the New Open-Source Kermit Project hosted by Panix was created on 1 July 2011, and that version 9.0 used the revised 3-clause BSD license. The same page documents continuing 10.0 beta work for Unix, VMS, and Windows, including revived built-in SSH and SSL/TLS support.

Adoption history

C-Kermit accumulated unusual portability because it targeted real communication environments rather than one operating system. The official 9.0 page lists Unix-like systems, VMS, QNX, Android, and many historical Unix variants, and it points to package availability across BSD and Linux distributions.

The package-manager story is part of its recent history: the Kermit site notes that Debian and Ubuntu dropped C-Kermit in May 2021, that a Snap was created for Ubuntu 20.04 users, and that Debian and Ubuntu were putting a development 9.0.305 package back in their distributions by November 2021.

How it is used

C-Kermit is used as an interactive terminal program, file-transfer client, protocol toolbox, and automation language. The official tutorial describes serial and network connections, terminal sessions, binary and text transfer, character-set conversion, custom configuration, and a built-in scripting language.

On Unix, the project presents it as an alternative or complement to classic tools such as cu, tip, minicom, uucp, ftp, telnet, ssh wrappers, expect, wget-like retrieval, and shell scripting for communications tasks.

Why package nerds care

C-Kermit matters to package historians because it is a living fossil of cross-platform communications software: a single command-line program spanning serial ports, modems, Telnet, SSH integration, FTP/HTTP clients, file transfer, and scripting.

It also shows how licensing and distribution policy affect old infrastructure tools. Version 9.0's BSD license made redistribution easier, while security-library churn and distro removals show why mature network packages can still be operationally hard to keep packaged.

Timeline

• 1981: The Kermit Project begins.
• 1985: C-Kermit is first written at Columbia University's Kermit Project.
• 1997: Using C-Kermit, Second Edition documents C-Kermit 6.0.
• 2011-07-01: New Open-Source Kermit Project hosted by Panix is created.
• 2011-08-20: C-Kermit 9.0.302 is released under the revised 3-clause BSD license.
• 2021-05: Debian and Ubuntu drop C-Kermit from their distributions.
• 2021-11: Debian and Ubuntu begin putting C-Kermit 9.0.305 back into their distributions.
• 2025-03-22: C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.12 is announced as the next release on the official C-Kermit page.

Related projects

• Kermit Project: the umbrella project for Kermit protocol and implementations.
• E-Kermit: the embedded/smaller Kermit implementation from the same project family.
• Kermit 95 and C-Kermit 10 for Windows: Windows-oriented descendants in the same communications lineage.
• ckermit-snap: a community Snap package referenced by the Kermit Project during the Debian/Ubuntu packaging gap.

Sources

• https://www.kermitproject.org/ck90.html
• https://www.kermitproject.org/ckbindex.html
• https://www.kermitproject.org/ckututor.html
• source_facts.package-manager