[Feature]: termux distro and rootfs

[knyipab]

Feature description

Would it be possible to add termux (bootstrap) as one of the supported distro in proot-distro?

Perhaps the primary use case is for on device build. Given that running termux build script and a build failure can mess up the existing termux environment. Also, building large package can require a large number of deps packages and tracking those manually can be painful. It would be useful if a Termux inside Termux environment can be done.

Besides, with qemu-user or qemu, proot-distro can manage a Termux rootfs in other architecture, probably useful for things like box64 (a glibc package) or fex (unlikely in Termux due to seccomp). If I am not mistaken, Termux does not support multiarch like ubuntu. I am not sure about this use case as I did not play around with box64.

Thanks for consideration.

[23xvx]

I think there is already a package to install an isolated termux environment in termux
which is termux-install

[knyipab]

Thanks for your info. However, the termux-install package has quite a number of limitations:

• Uses an outdated version of Termux bootstrap (2022 version)
• No option to isolate $HOME, which can be important in testing new packages
• No alias feature like proot-distro so cannot host multiple instances
• No multarch or qemu support (i.e. can't run x86_64 rootfs on aarch64)
• It's not official (on TUR) and no more updates since two years ago

Still, your info is very useful. That is a good starting point and I will build on that if Termux dev has no plan or think it not appropriate to include Termux rootfs in the proot-distro.

[sylirre]

Termux distro will be added eventually, but not before 5.x. It is not FHS-compliant and requires special handling.

[NoNameWasDefined]

You can try this old script.
I am trying to make a plugin for it but I'm not sure I will make it working.

[sylirre]

A modified bootstrap archive is a minimal requirement to get started. Although changes to proot-distro script will be required because Termux doesn't have certain things expected on a normal Linux distribution (e.g. /etc/passwd).

For using https://github.com/Neo-Oli/chrooted-termux/blob/master/prooted-termux you need to change bootstrap url.

[NoNameWasDefined]

I know and I'm trying to bypass it.
For the bootstrap URL know where to download.

[23xvx]

Maybe bootstrap files can be found here https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/releases/

[NoNameWasDefined]

Yes, just add a non-empty /etc folder with useless data for Termux but needed for PD and also create symlinks in SYMLINKS.txt.

[NoNameWasDefined]

Do someone know where is the bootstrap installer script of the app itself ?

[sylirre]

Termux app doesn't use scripts to install bootstrap. It just unzips the archive and processes SYMLINKS.txt.

Here is relevant code piece: https://github.com/termux/termux-app/blob/8be53336c381f427137d60170269966a08b6f462/app/src/main/java/com/termux/app/TermuxInstaller.java#L154-L219

[NoNameWasDefined]

Ah ok, just that lol.

[NoNameWasDefined]

And what is loaded in each startups ?

[sylirre]

On every session Termux runs /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/login.