AutomatizeFTP

A minimal, cross-platform FTP / SFTP client for desktop, built with Avalonia and ReactiveUI on modern .NET. Runs on macOS, Linux and Windows from a single codebase.

The goal is deliberately narrow: a fast, no-nonsense file transfer client — the FileZilla-style workflow you actually use day to day (browse local + remote, upload/download, navigate, manage files) — without the weight of a general-purpose cloud file manager.

Origin & credits

AutomatizeFTP started as a derivative of Camelotia by @worldbeater and the ReactiveUI community.

Camelotia is an excellent project. It's a genuinely well-architected, cross-platform sample that shows how to build reactive .NET desktop apps the right way — clean provider abstractions, ReactiveUI end to end, and a build/test setup that works across Windows, Linux and macOS. Much of the solid foundation this project stands on came straight from there, and it's worth studying on its own merits whether or not you care about FTP.

• Upstream: https://github.com/reactiveui/Camelotia
• This project: https://github.com/Automatize-Solutions/AutomatizeFTP

Camelotia is MIT-licensed. The original LICENSE is preserved in this repository, and the full upstream history is kept intact in the Git log — no history rewrite, so you can trace exactly where each piece came from.

What's different from Camelotia

Camelotia is a multi-provider cloud file manager (Google Drive, Yandex Disk, VK, GitHub, FTP, SFTP, local) targeting many UI heads (Avalonia, WPF, UWP, Xamarin). AutomatizeFTP strips that down to the essentials:

• Providers: only FTP, SFTP and the local file system are kept. All cloud providers and their SDK dependencies were removed.
• UI head: only the Avalonia target is kept. The WPF, UWP and Xamarin heads were dropped.
• Auth: the OAuth flow was removed (no remaining provider needs it); FTP/SFTP use direct host/credential authentication.
• Focus: the UI is being reshaped from a "cloud storage manager" into a purpose-built FTP/SFTP client.

Tech stack

• .NET (modern SDK-style projects, single Avalonia solution)
• Avalonia UI — cross-platform XAML UI framework
• ReactiveUI — MVVM / reactive view models
• FluentFTP — FTP / FTPS
• SSH.NET — SFTP
• Newtonsoft.Json — app-state persistence

Roadmap

The work is proceeding in stages, deliberately kept separate:

1. Prune — remove unused providers and UI heads, keep the solution building and tests green. (done)
2. Stabilize — fix outstanding test failures and any reactive-behavior drift inherited from dependency upgrades, to reach a known-good baseline. (done)
3. Rebrand — rename the Camelotia.* projects, solution and namespaces to AutomatizeFTP.* once the surface is minimal. (done)
4. Reshape the UI — turn the cloud-manager interface into a focused FTP/SFTP client (dual-pane browsing, transfer progress, connection/site management).
5. Polish & package — macOS-first packaging, then Linux and Windows.

Building

Requires a recent .NET SDK.

dotnet build src/AutomatizeFTP.slnx
dotnet test  src/AutomatizeFTP.slnx
dotnet run --project src/AutomatizeFTP.Presentation.Avalonia

Releases & distribution

Packaging and auto-updates are handled by Velopack. Pushing a tag (git tag v1.0.0 && git push origin v1.0.0) runs the release workflow, which tests, packages every platform and publishes a GitHub Release with:

• macOS (osx-arm64 / osx-x64): .pkg installer + portable .zip (ad-hoc signed — Gatekeeper requires right-click → Open, or approval under System Settings on macOS 15+, until builds are notarized with a Developer ID)
• Windows (win-x64): Setup.exe installer + portable .zip
• Linux (linux-x64): .AppImage

On startup the app checks GitHub Releases for a newer version in the background, downloads it silently and applies it on the next launch. Note: anonymous update checks only work once the repository (or at least its releases) is public; while it is private the check fails silently and the app behaves normally.

Manual packaging locally (same steps the workflow runs):

dotnet tool install --global vpk
dotnet publish src/AutomatizeFTP.Presentation.Avalonia -c Release -r osx-x64 \
  --self-contained -p:Version=1.0.0 -p:DebugType=none -o publish
vpk pack --packId AutomatizeFTP --packVersion 1.0.0 --packDir publish \
  --mainExe AutomatizeFTP.Presentation.Avalonia --packTitle AutomatizeFTP \
  --packAuthors "Automatize Solutions" --channel osx-x64 --outputDir releases \
  --icon src/AutomatizeFTP.Presentation.Avalonia/Assets/icon.icns \
  --bundleId com.automatize.AutomatizeFTP --signAppIdentity=-

License

MIT — see LICENSE. This project inherits Camelotia's MIT license and preserves the original copyright notice, as required.