Termux app for Android < 5 without packages

[kaztost]

Could you please port the Termux terminal emulator app for Android < 5 with /system/bin/sh as default shell (or different shell as an option).

I want to have the Termux app with its great touch support for midnight commander compiled by myself (people can use mc from Entware, Linux distributions, etc).

I tried to port the Termux app by myself cloning the project and simply setting minSdk=17, but the Android Studio's code inspector found a lot of classes and methods not supported for SDK < 21.

#6 Would the app itself (without many packages) be interesting in itself for older versions, running just as a terminal emulator?

Yes, this would be great!

[kaztost]

My post is not about Termux packages for old devices. I just is asking to port the Termux emulator for them. As I understand the main reason why Termux is not running on Android 4.4 and earlier, is incompatible /system/bin/linker, so the port of the emulator only is generally possible.

I know how to get binaries for these platforms. Also I know about Terminal Emulator, and I have used it (as well as ConnectBot too). But I like Termux emulator much more. Only Termux sends touches on the screen as mouse events for ncurses/slang. On big screens Midnight Commander in such console becomes very powerfull, fast and convenient in comparison with existsting Android file managers. Again, I am asking the terminal emulator for Android < 5, but not the binaries.

[ghost]

Some binaries are portable across UNIX Systems by nature. Such as BusyBox, Toy box, and many packaged as tar.gz ....

What about creating a fake root system yourself using a shell script, with essential libraries & then implementing dpkg?
I think it is a decent hack to get the thing done..

Or if you want to install some specific package, you may check out Debian Noroot on Google Play. Seems like there is a similar app on F-droid too..

[DoktorStein]

Indeed I think it would be useful to have Termux app (with no packages, maybe with Termux:Styling, Termux:Float etc) for Android < 5 even though there's plenty of terminal emulators for Android, because Termux has very useful unique features (sane copy/paste, Ctrl/Fn shortcuts works with default keyboard, pinch to change font size, customization through Termux: Styling, italic text etc). This is specially true when running text editors like vim or nano because Termux handles potrait/landscape modes correctly (all other terminal apps I tried forces me to issue a ^L to redraw after a screen orientation change).

[ghost]

Closing as no work for Android <7.0 is going to be done.