Install stunnel with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• stunnel
• stunnel3

Project history

The official changelog records stunnel 0.1 as a testing skeleton on 1998-02-10 and stunnel 1.0 on 1998-02-11 as the first version with SSL support. That makes it one of the older still-packaged command-line TLS utilities in Unix and Windows ecosystems.

The project has remained focused on wrapping arbitrary TCP services with SSL/TLS rather than replacing the underlying application protocol. Its manual and HOWTO present configuration as service sections that accept local connections and connect or execute another service behind the encrypted layer.

Adoption history

The input package facts list stunnel in Homebrew, Alpine, Fedora/DNF, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, Chocolatey, Scoop, WinGet, and openSUSE/Zypper. That breadth reflects stunnel's role as a portable operational tool rather than a single-platform utility.

The official downloads page publishes source tarballs, Windows installers, Android builds, signatures, checksums, and rsync-accessible code archives, showing a release process designed for downstream packagers and administrators.

How it is used

Administrators use stunnel to put TLS in front of non-TLS-aware services or to create encrypted client-side tunnels to remote services. The manual describes global options plus per-service sections containing options such as accept, connect, certificates, keys, and verification settings.

Common package usage is configuration-file driven: install the package, write stunnel.conf service blocks, provide certificates or keys where needed, and supervise stunnel as a daemon or service.

Why package nerds care

stunnel matters to package nerds because it is a classic tiny Unix tool with a huge compatibility surface: C code, OpenSSL linkage, service-manager integration, certificate file handling, Windows installers, and distribution patches all meet in one package.

It is also a practical example of packaging security middleware. The package is not exciting because it owns an application protocol; it is important because it lets old or simple services survive in TLS-required environments.

Timeline

• 1998: stunnel 0.1 testing skeleton and stunnel 1.0 with SSL support appeared in the official changelog.
• 2014: stunnel 5-era releases continued active OpenSSL security updates, including OpenSSL DLL updates during major vulnerability periods.
• 2026: The official release list shows stunnel 5.79 released on 2026-06-29.

Related projects

• OpenSSL is the cryptographic library stunnel relies on for TLS functionality.
• TCP Wrappers/libwrap appears in the manual as an optional access-control integration.

Sources

• https://www.stunnel.org/
• https://www.stunnel.org/NEWS.html
• https://www.stunnel.org/downloads.html
• https://www.stunnel.org/manual.html
• https://www.stunnel.org/versions.html
• input.source_facts.package-manager