termux-packages VS syncthing-android

This fully reflects my own Android experience (https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus) -- writing Android apps is by no means a write-and-forget experience. As time goes by more of my apps are dropped from the platform from my unwillingness to drop everything and rewrite code for each new Android version.

My original intent was to put my free, open-source apps on the platform, much as I had done before Android existed. But no -- Android doesn't work that way.

My best-known Android app is SSHelper (https://arachnoid.com/android/SSHelper/), a Secure Shell server meant for file transfers. Still work perfectly, dropped some time ago.

TankCalc (https://arachnoid.com/android/TankCalcAndroid/), same story. It's a well-known multi-platform app tank farm managers use to profile storage tanks. Still works, dropped from the platform.

And not just mine. Many other free, first-rate Android apps -- Termux (https://termux.dev/) comes to mind -- have been driven off the platform by Google's onerous demands and commercial focus.

It's as though a wall is going up between people who like programming and people who like money.

If you don’t have Termux installed, download it from the official source. Once installed, open Termux and update it with the following command:

No, but yes.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/blob/master/packag...

I just installed the package called `racket` from Termux's upstream, and it seems that they're using racket-minimal for that. But of a gotcha, but at least it doesn't seem like there's a bug.

containers/podman > [Feature]: Android support:

> There are docker and containerd in termux-packages. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/tree/master/root-p...

But Android 13+ supports rootless pKVM VMs, which podman-machine should be able to run containers in; but only APK-installed binaries are blessed with the necessary extended filesystem attributes to exec on Android 4.4+ with SELinux in enforcing mode.

- Android pKVM: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architec... :

> qemu + pKVM + podman-machine: https://github.com/containers/podman/discussions/17717 :

> The protected kernel-based virtual machine (pKVM) is built upon the Linux KVM hypervisor, which has been extended with the ability to restrict access to the payloads running in guest virtual machines marked ‘protected’ at the time of creation.

> KVM/arm64 supports different execution modes depending on the availability of certain CPU features, namely, the Virtualization Host Extensions (VHE) (ARMv8.1 and later).

- "Android 13 virtualization lets [Pixel >= 6] run Windows 11, Linux distributions" (2022)

Not from PlayStore, but apparently everyone has English reading comprehension problems and wants to write a comment anyway.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

Thank you for this. Just adding this here:

There seems to be an issue with recent Android apis that make file access painfully slow that it wasn't able to sync my data in 1 full day. Enabling the "Case Sensitive FS" option on the folder helped a lot.

https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/1088#...

I've been using Obtainium to install Android apps from Github releases and automatically update them. It's worked great.

Syncthing's .apk release files can be found here: https://github.com/catfriend1/syncthing-android

I was browsing this thread to try to find a workaround. There seems to be a fork that you either have to install through fdroid or as an apk. https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/1149#...

Yes, very sad.

Two alternatives exist:

1. Syncthing-Fork (https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android) - Works just like the official app. Install from F-Droid or GitHub. Single developer but active.

2. Syncthing in Termux - Run the actual Syncthing program in Termux. Takes more setup but uses the standard version.

The fork is easier to use, while Termux needs more setup but gives you the standard Syncthing experience.

Same! I use [syncthing-fork](https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android) to automate the process.

Been using catfriend1's Syncthing fork https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android for years. Works well.

Available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncth...

The author of Syncthing-fork has actually said they've had similar problems with Google and believe it's only a matter of time before their app is locked in a similar way - so much so that they are planning to surrender their Play developer account:

https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android#about-play-s...

I use https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android which has an option to run only every X minutes of each hour, as a decent tradeoff.

This version also ships and Android Quick Settings tile that will start Syncthing for those X minutes and stop it outside of that schedule, so I'll hit the button as I'm putting on shoes to go out after making a shopping list on my phone or what have you