Install tnftp with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• tnftp

Project history

The NetBSD manual page shows both lineages: Berkeley Regents copyrights from the 1980s and early 1990s, and NetBSD Foundation work beginning in 1996 contributed by Luke Mewburn. The NetBSD source version header identifies the product as `NetBSD-ftp` and records a 20260208 version in current source.

The portable distribution history is documented in NetBSD's tnftp archive. The directory message states that tnftp is a port of the enhanced NetBSD ftp client to other systems and that `lukemftp` was renamed to `tnftp`. Archived tarballs show `lukemftp` releases beginning in 1999, a `tnftp-2.0-beta1` tarball in 2003, date-stamped tnftp tarballs through the 2000s and 2010s, and a 2026 tarball.

Adoption history

tnftp's adoption comes from being a maintained, portable BSD ftp client at a time when base-system ftp clients were disappearing, diverging, or lacking HTTP/URL conveniences. The supplied package facts show it in Homebrew, Fedora/DNF, MacPorts, Arch, openSUSE/Zypper, and as `ftp` in Debian and Ubuntu.

The man page's auto-fetching support is a key adoption detail: it can fetch FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and file URLs directly into the current directory, which made it useful in scripts and package recipes that wanted a familiar `ftp` command with URL support.

How it is used

Users invoke `ftp` or `tnftp` interactively to transfer files to and from FTP servers, or non-interactively to fetch URLs. The manual page documents `.netrc` support through `-N`, anonymous mode, passive/active behavior, IPv4/IPv6 selection, retries, output naming, custom HTTP headers, and URL auto-fetching.

In package-manager culture, tnftp often appears as a pragmatic replacement for a missing or weaker system ftp client. It gives bootstrap scripts and port recipes a small BSD-licensed network fetcher with predictable behavior across Unix-like systems.

Why package nerds care

For package nerds, tnftp matters because it is both historical userland and packaging glue. It preserves the Berkeley/NetBSD ftp interface while making that interface portable and useful for scripted downloads, including HTTP(S) URLs.

It also illustrates why package managers sometimes carry tools that look obsolete by protocol name: even after FTP's decline, a compact, scriptable `ftp` command remained useful for compatibility, bootstrap, and reproducible build environments.

Timeline

• 1985-1994: Berkeley FTP client ancestry appears in the NetBSD manual page copyrights and SCCS marker.
• 1996: NetBSD Foundation ftp work begins in the manual page copyright range.
• 1999: `lukemftp-1.0.tar.gz` appears in the NetBSD tnftp archive.
• 2003: `tnftp-2.0-beta1.tar.gz` appears after the rename from lukemftp to tnftp.
• 2023: NetBSD archive publishes date-stamped tnftp tarballs for April and May 2023.
• 2026: NetBSD current source identifies `FTP_VERSION` as `20260208`, and the archive contains `tnftp-20260211.tar.gz`.

Related projects

• Related to NetBSD's base-system `ftp` client in `usr.bin/ftp`.
• Closely paired in the portable archive with tnftpd, the corresponding NetBSD FTP server port.

Sources

• https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/tnftp/
• https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/tnftp/.message
• https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/tnftp/archive/
• https://github.com/NetBSD/src/tree/trunk/usr.bin/ftp
• https://man.netbsd.org/ftp.1
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NetBSD/src/trunk/usr.bin/ftp/version.h
• input source_facts.package-manager