dtach-bin

Precompiled dtach binary shipped as Python wheels for Linux and macOS. Install via pip / pipx and the dtach binary lands on PATH automatically — no compiler, no system package manager required.

This package exists so that Python projects can declare dtach as a runtime dependency the same way they declare any other Python package — and have it work across Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64, macOS Intel, and macOS Apple Silicon out of the box. The packaging pattern is the same one used by nodejs-bin (ships Node.js), cmake (ships CMake), and ninja (ships the Ninja build tool).

Install

pip install dtach-bin

— or in anything that wraps pip: pipx, uv, poetry, hatch, etc.

Use

After install, call dtach normally:

dtach -n /tmp/my-session.sock bash      # create a detached session
dtach -a /tmp/my-session.sock            # reattach to it

From Python, ask for the absolute path of the bundled binary:

import dtach_bin
print(dtach_bin.path())  # → '/.../venv/bin/dtach'

dtach_bin.path() returns the binary in the active venv first (so it works even with pipx and uv tool install layouts where the venv's bin/ isn't on the calling shell's PATH), falling back to a PATH lookup. Useful when a host process needs to invoke dtach via subprocess and can't rely on a particular shell PATH being set.

Supported platforms

Pre-built wheels are published for:

If pip can't find a wheel for your platform (FreeBSD, Linux musl, exotic arches, etc.) it falls back to the sdist and builds from source — see Building from source. dtach is plain POSIX C using only libc and termios, so the build works anywhere a cc + make toolchain is available.

How it works

The wheel is not a Python C extension. It's a regular pure-Python package whose only Python content is the dtach_bin/__init__.py helper module, plus the compiled dtach binary placed in the wheel's scripts data location. At install time, pip lays the binary down at <prefix>/bin/dtach, which is on PATH for any tool that runs inside that environment.

Each platform wheel is built inside the standard pypa/manylinux2014 container (on Linux) or against MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11.0 (on macOS), then re-tagged from cp310-cp310-<platform> to py3-none-<platform> — the binary doesn't depend on the Python version, so any Python 3 can install it.

The full CI pipeline lives in .github/workflows/build-wheels.yml: checkout → verify the vendored source SHA-256 → compile dtach inside the target environment → bundle into a wheel → upload to PyPI via Trusted Publisher OIDC (no API tokens stored anywhere).

Building from source

To build a wheel locally — useful when contributing or when no pre-built wheel exists for your platform:

git clone https://github.com/dev-aly3n/dtach-bin && cd dtach-bin

# Compile dtach into the package's binary slot
tar -xzf vendor/dtach-0.9.tar.gz -C /tmp
( cd /tmp/dtach-0.9 && ./configure && make )
cp /tmp/dtach-0.9/dtach src/dtach_bin/_bin/dtach
chmod +x src/dtach_bin/_bin/dtach

# Build the wheel
python3 -m build --wheel
ls dist/

The vendored source tarball is the upstream crigler/dtach v0.9 release; its SHA-256 is committed at vendor/dtach-0.9.tar.gz.sha256 and verified in CI before every build.

License

dtach itself is GPL-2.0-only (© 2004–2016 Ned T. Crigler). This package redistributes the unmodified dtach source plus a thin Python helper, and is therefore also licensed under GPL-2.0-only — see LICENSE for the full text.

You can depend on dtach-bin from a non-GPL project. Programs that invoke dtach as a separate process (via subprocess / exec) are not derivative works of dtach — see the FSF GPL FAQ on mere aggregation. This is the same arrangement that lets Debian and Homebrew ship dtach alongside non-GPL software. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for upstream credits.

Reporting issues

For build problems specific to this package, open an issue at github.com/dev-aly3n/dtach-bin/issues.

For dtach bugs or behavior questions, see upstream: github.com/crigler/dtach.