Netatalk is a freely-available Open Source fileserver that implements the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) 3.4. AFP was the primary file sharing protocol for Apple Macintosh and Apple II computers from 1987 to 2013. A *NIX/*BSD system running Netatalk is capable of serving many Macintosh clients simultaneously as an AppleShare file server.
If you're running a network of older Macs, in particular those running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or earlier, all the way back to Classic Mac OS, are well served by running a Netatalk AppleShare server. The latest macOS at the time of writing (macOS 13 Ventura) still comes with an AFP client, so Netatalk can act as a seamless bridge between new and old Macs.
Compared to other Open Source file sharing solutions such as NFS or Samba, Netatalk delivers high transfer speeds and full integration of classic Mac OS metadata (resource forks) as well as a wide range of UAMs for user authentication.
Please see https://github.com/Netatalk/Netatalk/wiki/Developer-Notes for guidelines and instructions how to submit a PR against the Netatalk codebase on GitHub.
PRs are automatically picked up by GitHub CI and static analysis scan executed on Sonarcloud.
The latest version of the Netatalk manual can be found at https://netatalk.sourceforge.io/3.1/htmldocs/
Collaborative articles can be found on the Netatalk wiki hosted on GitHub. Please feel free to edit existing and create new articles. https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk/wiki
Netatalk contributors interact with each other primarily on the netatalk-devel mailing list. Subscribe and read archives at https://sourceforge.net/p/netatalk/mailman/
The Netatalk website is where new releases and other news about the project are posted.