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Termux

  • Nov 17, 2023

Sometimes you need to work on the go. Termux provides a terminal environment on your Android phone. This is written for me, but others made find it useful.

Install termux

Termux is no longer releasing current versions on Google Play. Hence, first install F-Droid. Then search for “termux” and install it!

Then update and upgrade to ensure you have the latest packages.

pkg update
pkg upgrade

Some of the later packages (R) require x11 libraries. Hence, simply install the termux recommended packages

pkg install x11-repo
pkg install root-repo
apt autoremove

If you want termux, you likely want to grant it access to local storage:

termux-setup-storage

The above must be done in the termux window, so the pop-up can be enabled.

ssh access

You likely want ssh access:

pkg install openssh
sshd

You likely want to bring over your ssh keys from your other machine:

scp user@host.com:.ssh/authorized_keys .ssh/.
sshd

Other termux useful packages

Then install your most useful packages!

Python

I use a significant number of python packages. Here are some that are typically desired:

Jupyterlab

I want python including jupyterlab as well as other scientific python packages. A good repository for that is https://its-pointless.github.io

This sequence was required to satisfy some dependencies which otherwise wouldn’t compile.

pkg install git python emacs rsync rust binutils cmake build-essential make clang flang
curl -LO https://its-pointless.github.io/setup-pointless-repo.sh
bash setup-pointless-repo.sh
pip install ruamel.yaml==0.17.21
pkg install libandroid-spawn patchelf ninja 
pip install jupyter
pip install pgen

Scipy, Pandas

An additional repository is necessary (for simplicity)

pkg install tur-repo
pkg install python-numpy python-pandas python-scipy

Plotly, plotly

pkg install libjpeg-turbo
pip install sympy
pip install plotly

Apache

Just in case you want to web serve:

pkg install apache2

R

As of the date of publication, the termux repo maintained version of r (https://www.r-project.org/) does not work due to library linking and consistencies. however, compilation is relatively straightforward assuming the following is completed.

pkg install make clang openssl libcurl libicu libxml2 wget which

VERSION=4.3.2

wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-${VERSION}.tar.gz
tar xavf R-${VERSION}.tar.gz 
cd R-${VERSION}/

mkdir -p $PREFIX/local/R-${VERSION}
CFLAGS='-O2' CXXFLAGS='-O2' FFLAGS='-O2' LTCFLAGS='-g -O2' CC=clang CXX=clang++ OBJC=clang FC=flang-new ./configure --enable-R-shlib --prefix=$PREFIX/local/R-${VERSION} --with-x=no
make -j4
make install

echo export PATH=/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/local/R-${VERSION}/lib/R/bin:\$\{PATH\} >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Subsequently, install any necessary packages

Install some dependencies:

pip install ambiance
pkg install libcairo xorgproto gdal
pkg install bthread-dev libcairo
pkg install pandoc

Prepare for compiling within R. (For some reason, on one of my installations of termux, the local dictory was not in the include path, hence it is added with this file.)

mkdir R-packages
cd R-packages
mkdir ~/.R
cat << EOF >> .R/Makevars
PKG_LIBS+=-lbthread
CXXFLAGS+=-I.
CFLAGS+=-I.
EOF

There are a few R packages which are problematic and it is wise to install these first. First, get the patches. Originally they are distributed from its-pointless however, I had to update the patches are they are best downloaded from my own fork (as of publication of this post).

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gustafson/gcc_termux/master/R-patches/later-tincythread.h.patch
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gustafson/gcc_termux/master/R-patches/rcran-fs-Makevars.patch
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gustafson/gcc_termux/master/R-patches/rcran-fs-id.cc.patch


wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/fs_1.6.3.tar.gz
tar xavf fs_1.6.3.tar.gz
patch -p0 < rcran-fs-id.cc.patch
patch -p0 < rcran-fs-Makevars.patch

wget https://repo.miserver.it.umich.edu/cran/src/contrib/later_1.3.1.tar.gz
tar xavf later_1.3.1.tar.gz
patch -p0 < later-tincythread.h.patch

The launch R and install it those:

install.packages("/data/data/com.termux/files/home/R-packages/fs", repos = NULL, type = "source")
install.packages("/data/data/com.termux/files/home/R-packages/later", repos = NULL, type = "source")

And then follow up with the remaining packages. For example:

install.packages("knitr")
install.packages("rmarkdown")
install.packages("bookdown")

install.packages("svglite")
install.packages("DT")
install.packages("reticulate")
install.packages("leaflet")

Termux other stuff

mkdir -p .termux/boot
echo "termux-wake-lock && sshd" >> ~/.termux/boot/start-sshd
apt install termux-api termux-services
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