Why can’t sshfs be install from brew?

[antoine2711]

Hi,

I see that there is a link to download the .pkg for SSHFS on your page, https://macfuse.github.io/, but on homebrew, when I try to install it, I get:

brew install sshfs
sshfs: Linux is required for this software.
libfuse: Linux is required for this software.
Error: sshfs: Unsatisfied requirements failed this build.

Is there a good reason for that?

Regards,
Antoine

[bfleischer]

This is a rather long story. As far as I know, Homebrew has a standing policy to distribute only software that can be built on the end user's Mac. However, building the macFUSE kernel extension on an end user's Mac and loading it without compromising system security is not possible on recent versions of macOS. Kernel extensions need to be code signed and notarized. This requires a special code singing certificate that only select developers have access to. Loading unsigned kernel extensions (built by Homebrew) would be possible after disabling system integrity protection (SIP), but this would compromise system security. This means it's not possible to install macFUSE through Homebrew and Homebrew is therefore unable to resolve a dependency of SSHFS on macOS. As a result you cannot install SSHFS through Homebrew on macOS.

[antoine2711]

Thanks for the explanation @bfleischer. Very interesting.

I have another question. Where can I find the repository for your version of SSHFS? Is it public?
I could only find this repo, osxfuse/sshfs, which even if it has a later version, v2.5, seams much older than yours, v2.1.

Thanks for your work, I really appreciate using the FUSE tool on the Mac.

Regards, Antoine

[bfleischer]

The source is in the official SSHFS repository at https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs (commit 3ea4c59 on the sshfs_2.x branch)

For future reference see https://github.com/macfuse/macfuse/wiki/File-Systems-%E2%80%90-SSHFS.