Install dos2unix with Homebrew, apk, chocolatey, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• dos2unix
• mac2unix
• unix2dos
• unix2mac

Project history

The current dos2unix package is an Erwin Waterlander-maintained update of Benjamin Lin's dos2unix and unix2dos implementations. The official history traces the lineage back to John Birchfield's 1989 versions, Benjamin Lin's 1995 rewrite, Bernd Johannes Wuebben's 1998 Mac-to-Unix addition, and Waterlander's 2010 Unix-to-Mac addition.

The Waterlander package bundled the formerly separate dos2unix and unix2dos packages into a single dos2unix release at version 5.0 in 2010. Later milestones included UTF-16 support in version 6.0 in 2012 and a major cleanup plus test suite in version 7.0 in 2014.

Adoption history

Benjamin Lin's implementations were distributed through SunSITE.unc.edu, later MetaLab and ibiblio, and became part of Linux distributions including Red Hat, SUSE, Gentoo, and others. The Homebrew source facts also list broad packaging across apk, Debian, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, Scoop, Ubuntu, winget, and zypper.

The official homepage continues to publish source archives and ready-to-run binaries for DOS, Windows, and OS/2 alongside Unix-style documentation, reflecting a tool whose user base spans old and modern operating systems.

How it is used

The package includes dos2unix, unix2dos, mac2unix, and unix2mac commands. It is commonly used in source checkouts, release scripts, build systems, and data-cleanup pipelines when files cross Windows and Unix-like environments.

Modern dos2unix does more than swap CRLF and LF: official documentation covers in-place and paired conversion modes, binary-file skipping, symbolic-link behavior, Unicode UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion, byte-order-mark handling, recursive conversion recipes, and translated manuals.

Why package nerds care

dos2unix is a classic small package that persists because text line endings remain a real interoperability boundary. Package maintainers care about it because it is tiny, has no credential or daemon surface, and shows up wherever archives, generated files, or vendored code cross platform conventions.

Its significance is also historical: it preserves SunOS/Solaris-style behavior while adjusting defaults for practical Unix packaging, such as in-place conversion by default in this implementation.

Timeline

• 1989: John Birchfield creates early dos2unix/unix2dos versions modeled after SunOS/Solaris tools.
• 1995: Benjamin Lin rewrites the implementations from scratch.
• 1998: Mac-to-Unix conversion is added by Bernd Johannes Wuebben.
• 2010: Erwin Waterlander adds Unix-to-Mac conversion and bundles dos2unix and unix2dos into one package as version 5.0.
• 2012: Version 6.0 adds Unicode UTF-16 support.
• 2014: Version 7.0 performs a major cleanup and adds a test suite.
• 2026: Version 7.5.6 is published with the new waterlander.net homepage and updated manual translations.

Related projects

• The package is related to the historical SunOS/Solaris dos2unix utilities it was modeled after, to Benjamin Lin's earlier public implementations, and to the paired unix2dos/mac2unix/unix2mac commands shipped in the same package.

Sources

• https://waterlander.net/dos2unix
• https://dos2unix.sourceforge.io/dos2unix/man1/dos2unix.htm
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/dos2unix