INSTALL.md

Installing tailcat

This page lists the ways to install the tailcat CLI. For what tailcat is and how to use it, see the README.

Prebuilt binaries

Prebuilt binaries are on the Releases page: static Linux binaries (tar.gz) plus Debian (.deb) and RPM (.rpm) packages for amd64, arm64, and armv7, and Windows binaries (zip) for amd64 and arm64.

Homebrew (macOS)

For macOS, install with Homebrew:

$ brew install tailcat

Scoop (Windows)

For Windows, install with Scoop. The package is in Scoop's main bucket, so no extra bucket is needed:

$ scoop install tailcat

Snap (Linux)

For Linux distros with snapd, install from the Snap Store:

$ sudo snap install tailcat

The snap is community-maintained (packaging source at chanchiwai-ray/tailcat-snap) and built from the upstream release tag with the recommended build tags. It's strictly confined: it can read and write files under your home directory but not elsewhere, and it bundles its own OpenSSH client for tailcat ssh and tailcat cp. As with any snap, its config (including the tailcat key and ssh's .ssh directory) lives under the snap's private home, ~/snap/tailcat/current, rather than your real ~/.config and ~/.ssh.

Container image

There's a container image:

$ docker pull ghcr.io/tailscale/tailcat:latest  # or :vx.y.z
$ docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/tailscale/tailcat:latest

Don't add -t: a pty is a single byte stream, so it merges the status output that tailcat writes to stderr (including the listening address) into stdout with the tunnel data, and no redirection can separate the two again. Use -i alone when piping through stdin.

Go toolchain

Build from source with a Go toolchain:

$ go install github.com/tailscale/tailcat/cmd/tailcat@latest

This works on any operating system Go supports. It's the only install method for FreeBSD and OpenBSD, which are expected to work but aren't regularly tested; CI checks that they keep compiling. It's also the only way to target browsers: the tailcat Go library and the web demo (the web directory in this repo) build for js/wasm.

Nix

With Nix, from nixpkgs:

$ nix profile install nixpkgs#tailcat
$ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.tailcat  # or with classic nix-env

Or with Nix flakes from this repo, run it directly or install it:

$ nix run github:tailscale/tailcat
$ nix profile install github:tailscale/tailcat

Arch Linux (AUR)

# Build release package from source
yay -S tailcat

# OR install the binary release
yay -S tailcat-bin

conda-forge

pixi global install tailcat
# run without installation
pixi exec tailcat

Packaging from source

The official binaries are built with a list of build tags that omits unused Tailscale features, making them about 16% smaller. The recommended tag list is checked in as build-tags.txt (and kept accurate by a CI test), so packagers (Homebrew, AUR, NixOS, etc.) can build the same way:

$ go build -tags "$(cat build-tags.txt)" -ldflags "-s -w" ./cmd/tailcat

See build-tags.md for the details.