bug#28672: 25.3; Problems with GNU FTP and Dired in macOS 10.13

[George Plymale II <georgie@southernohio.net>]

Hi,

So Apple rudely decided to remove the `ftp' command-line utility from
the latest release of macOS: 10.13. They also removed `telnet' and some
others, which is really unfortunate. For people who still need these
tools (such as myself), the alternatives are sparse and, well... less
than ideal.

Those alternatives are as follows: first, one could just recompile and
install the tools from Apple's open-source repository
(https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/ ). In fact, someone actually has
made a script for installing `telnet' in this way on the homebrew
package manager:
https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/telnet.rb

However, doing this for all of the commands that are missing (including
rsh, rcp, etc.) is impractical, annoying, and possibly brittle in the
face of updates. So, another alternative is to take these tools from
FreeBSD and make them readily available in package managers, but no one
has done this yet.

The final alternative (that I can think of) is the GNU inetutils, which
is readily available in homebrew (although not fink or macports, as far
as I can tell):
https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/inetutils.rb

Unfortunately, the GNU inetutils do not seem to work quite right on
macOS 10.13. For example, `ftp' has some very odd problems with
Dired. This is unfortunate for folks like me who use Dired as an FTP
client.

For more details on this issue, I reported a bug about it on
bug-inetutils:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-inetutils/2017-09/msg00000.html

I also (initially) posed a question about it on the Emacs Stackexchange
forum: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/q/35747/10761. The reason that
I'm posting here as well is because someone on Stackexchange mentioned
that this may in fact be a bug with Emacs on its macOS build. I am not
sure whether or not that is the case so here I am.

Any help or advice on this issue is appreciated. Thanks.