Objective-C

SSHKit ships a parallel Objective-C façade (SSHKitObjC) covering connection, command, shell, SFTP, tunneling, and forwarding. A few Swift-only conveniences — the SCP helpers, the keychain credential store, key generation wrappers, the algorithm-profile struct, and the latency probe — do not have direct Obj-C counterparts and are listed at the bottom of this page. Import the umbrella header:

#import <SSHKitObjC/SSHKitObjC.h>

Canonical example

SSHKitConfiguration *configuration =
    [[SSHKitConfiguration alloc] initWithHost:@"example.com"
                                     username:@"deploy"];

configuration.authentication = [SSHKitAuthentication password:@"secret"];
// Use a known_hosts file on first connection; switch to a populated
// keychain trust store after you have stored the server's fingerprint.
configuration.hostKeyPolicy =
    [SSHKitHostKeyPolicy knownHostsFile:[@"~/.ssh/known_hosts" stringByExpandingTildeInPath]];

[SSHKitClient connectWithConfiguration:configuration
                            completion:^(SSHKitConnection *connection, NSError *error) {
    if (error != nil) {
        NSLog(@"connect failed: %@", error);
        return;
    }
    [connection executeCommand:@"uname -a"
                    completion:^(SSHKitCommandResult *result, NSError *error) {
        if (error != nil) {
            NSLog(@"execute failed: %@", error);
            return;
        }
        NSString *stdout = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:result.standardOutput
                                                 encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
        NSLog(@"%@ (exit %d)", stdout, result.exitStatus);
        [connection disconnectWithCompletion:^(NSError *error) {}];
    }];
}];

Class & type inventory

Entry & configuration

Host trust

Connection & jobs

SFTP

Authentication discovery

Host-key discovery

Either entry point performs a transport-only handshake. Build an SSHKitConfiguration with the host, port, timeout, proxy, and algorithm fields — authentication and username are not consulted during discovery.

Logging

Errors

Key generation & algorithm inspection

Swift → Obj-C mapping

Obj-C-only surface

One method has no direct Swift counterpart:

• -[SSHKitConnection executePTYCommand:completion:] — runs a collected command through a PTY-backed channel and returns an SSHKitCommandResult the same way executeCommand:completion: does. Use it for commands that detect a TTY (sudo without -n, interactive prompts, programs that gate their output on isatty). Swift callers needing the same behavior can fall through to the Obj-C façade directly, or open a streamed channel via openShell for fully interactive use.

Swift-only surface

These are Swift conveniences with no direct Obj-C counterpart:

• SCP helpers — uploadFileWithSCP / downloadFileWithSCP live as a public extension SSHConnection built on top of streamed commands. Obj-C callers can re-implement the SCP protocol on top of SSHKitCommand if needed.
• Keychain credential store — SSHKeychainCredentialStore persists passwords and private keys keyed by account.
• Key generation — SSHKeyGenerator is a Swift wrapper. Obj-C callers can call SSHKitGeneratedKeyPair directly with its SSHKitKeyGenerationType enum.
• Algorithm profile struct — SSHAlgorithmProfile is Swift; the Obj-C side exposes raw fields on SSHKitConfiguration and +SSHKitAlgorithmInspector inspectAlgorithmsWith… for resolved snapshots.
• Latency probe — SSHPortLatencyProbe.measure(...) is Swift-only.