Install robotfindskitten with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• robotfindskitten

Project history

The concept began as a 1996 web contest devised by Jake Berendes. Leonard Richardson wrote the original DOS implementation in 1997 as the contest’s only entry.

Richardson rewrote the program for Linux in 1999. Roughly two years later, a group of free-software contributors rediscovered it and began coordinating ports and continued development.

The project subsequently maintained a POSIX C/curses reference implementation and formalized its stable behavior in an official 2009 standards draft. Active source development later moved to Codeberg; the GitHub repository is explicitly a read-only mirror.

Adoption history

After the Linux rewrite was rediscovered around 2001, free-software contributors spread robotfindskitten across many platforms. The official site records POSIX, PalmOS, Dreamcast, Game Boy, browser, calculator, Rockbox, Wii, and other implementations.

The 2009 official standards draft reported more than 30 distinct versions. The POSIX version entered Debian GNU/Linux and subsequently appeared in numerous Unix-like package collections; the supplied package facts record Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora-family, Arch, Nix, and MacPorts packaging.

How it is used

In the terminal version, the player moves robot through a character-cell field and touches objects to determine whether they are kitten. Finding kitten ends the simulation; other objects display non-kitten-item messages.

Why package nerds care

robotfindskitten is a classic piece of Unix package-catalog whimsy: tiny, portable, text based, and deliberately resistant to productivity-oriented justification. Its long list of ports and unusually broad distribution packaging make it a recognizable “because we can” package.

Its mock-serious terminology, standards document, lower-case naming convention, and non-kitten-item corpus exemplify the playful culture surrounding small free-software packages.

Timeline

• 1996: Jake Berendes devised the original robotfindskitten contest concept.
• 1997: Leonard Richardson wrote the original DOS implementation.
• 1999: Richardson rewrote robotfindskitten for Linux.
• Circa 2001: Free-software contributors rediscovered the program and began spreading ports.
• 2009: The official robotfindskitten standards draft documented the reference behavior and more than 30 implementations.
• 2012: The Mayan Apocalypse Edition was released.

Related projects

• The POSIX C/curses implementation serves as the reference version.
• Numerous independent ports reproduce the simulation on consoles, handhelds, calculators, browsers, and other environments.
• The current GitHub repository is a read-only mirror of the authoritative Codeberg repository.

Sources

• Official history: https://robotfindskitten.org/aw.cgi?main=home.rfk
• Official software/ports catalog: https://robotfindskitten.org/aw.cgi?main=software.rfk
• Official source repository: https://codeberg.org/robotfindskitten/robotfindskitten
• Official standards draft: https://robotfindskitten.org/download/rfk-rfc/rfk-01.pdf