Android, Termux and Dev Environment

By R. S. Doiel 2016-09-20

Recently I got a new Android 6 tablet. I got a case with a tiny Bluetooth keyboard. I started wondering if I could use it as a development device when on the road. So this is my diary of that test.

Challenges

1. Find a way to run Bash without rooting my device
2. See if I could use my normal web toolkit

* curl
* jq
* sed
* grep
3. See if I could compile or add my own custom Golang programs
4. Test setup by running a local static file server, mkpage and update my website

Searching for Android packages and tools of my toolbox

After searching with Duck Duck Go and Google I came across the termux[1]. Termux provides a minimal Bash shell environment with support for adding packages with apt and dpkg. The repositories visible to termux include most of the C tool chain (e.g. clang, make, autoconf, etc) as well as my old Unix favorites curl, grep, sed, gawk and a new addition to my toolkit jq. Additionally you'll find recent versions (as of Sept. 2016) versions of Golang, PHP, python, and Ruby.

1: https://termux.com (https://termux.com)

This quickly brought me through step 3. Installing go, git, and openssh completed what I needed to test static site development with some of the tools in our incubator at Caltech Library[2].

2: https://caltechlibrary.github.io (https://caltechlibrary.github.io)

Setting up for static site development

After configuring git, adding my public key to GitHub and running go get on my custom static site tools I confirmed I could build and test static websites from my Android tablet using Termux.

Here's the list of packages I installed under Termux to provide a suitable shell environment for writing and website constructions.

    apt install autoconf automake bash-completion bc binutils-dev bison \
        bzip2 clang cmake coreutils ctags curl dialog diffutils dos2unix \
        expect ffmpeg findutils gawk git gnutls golang grep gzip \
    imagemagick jq less lynx m4 make-dev man-dev nano nodejs \
        openssh patch php-dev python readline-dev rlwrap rsync ruby-dev \
        sed sensible-utils sharutils sqlite tar texinfo tree unzip vim \
        w3m wget zip

This then allowed me to setup my golang environment variables and install my typical custom written tools

    export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
    export GOPATH=$HOME
    export GOBIN=$HOME/bin
    go get github.com/rsdoiel/shelltools/...
    go get github.com/caltechlibrary/mkpage/...
    go get github.com/caltechlibrary/md2slides/...
    go get github.com/caltechlibrary/ws/...

Finally pulled down some content to test.

    cd
    mkdir Sites
    git clone https://github.com/rsdoiel/rsdoiel.github.io.git Sites/rsdoiel.github.io
    cd  Sites/rsdoiel.github.io
    ws

This started the local static site webserver and I pointed by Firefox for Android at http://localhost:8000[3] and saw a local copy of my personal website. From there I wrote this article and updated it just as if I was working on a Raspberry Pi or standard Linux laptop.

3: http://localhost:8000 (http://localhost)