Re: Android port of Emacs

[Po Lu]

Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

> Why keeping the Android port on its own *branch* prevents it from being
> on emacs.git? How that prevents distributing source tarballs and
> binaries targeting Android from the official GNU Emacs site?

I thought Eli proposed for me to move the port to its separate project
on Savannah, not on feature/android.

> Po Lu: I installed your apk on a tablet today. I'm truly impressed, for
> sure the feat required many ours of research and quite a bit of
> inventiveness.

Not really: Android is relatively straightforward, and thankfully Java
is easy for C programmers.  Thanks for the compliment.

> That said, if my understanding is correct, the port suffers from a
> serious limitation (imposed by Android, of course) in that the user
> can't install binaries and use them from Emacs on the usual way. An
> Emacs that can't invoke git, gcc... is of little use to me, although I'm
> sure that many users will find the port extremely convenient (Org users,
> for instance.) Emacs on Termux has no such limitation, but it has its
> own problems, starting with a terrible user interface.

The issues with installing and running binaries has been completely
solved: in fact, it is possible to build the entire Termux binary
repositories with the prefix changed to `org.gnu.emacs', and to run
the programs built directly from inside Emacs.

If anyone needs help with this, and the instructions in:

  https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/

don't help, please feel free to contact me off-list.  Thanks.