Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android device (termux-based)

Re:Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android de... by heavyset_go on Sunday April 30, 2023 @04:23AM (#35760630)

I tried searching the UserLand repo for how they implemented this, are they running native Linux apps in a GNU userland, possibly with namespaces/chroot, without virtualization? Does it do what Termux does and recompile binaries against the NDK?

I've watched projects like this come and go for like 12 years now, and I've always thought that it's an interesting problem with interesting solutions.

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Re:Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android de... by Rufbdbskrufb473 on Sunday April 30, 2023 @08:06AM (#35761814)

I could be wrong, but I believe they were using a modified chroot with some preload libraries to intercept missing kernel calls.

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Re:Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android de... by kortriephfhe on Sunday April 30, 2023 @11:32AM (#35763499)

IIRC it was `proot`, it's not a preload, but ptrace based.

preload based unprivileged chroot exists (libfakechroot), but doesn't work for static linked binaries.

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Re:Nix-on-droid: Nix-enabled environment for your Android de... by kortriephfhe on Sunday April 30, 2023 @11:33AM (#35763522)

IIRC they do complete proot-based distro instead of ndk-recompiles.

There's a termux equivalent package called proot-distro you can install, if you're fine with CLI.

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