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Your wording makes it sound like you think Google out of its way to break termux. What makes you believe that? Its execution model is at odds with the security

Your wording makes it sound like you think Google out of its way to break termux. What makes you believe that? Its execution model is at odds with the security model Android pushes for so of course it'll come with some challenges. It tries to provide an environment suitable for a legacy application model that doesn't really take security as seriously. The only real way to win here is by using a VM which is what ChromeOS did. That allows sufficient isolation such that it need not try to force something to work in an environment not built for it.

AshamedCaptain 2y ago
> It tries to provide an environment suitable for a legacy application model that doesn't really take security as seriously. Erm... what? > The only real way to win here is by using a VM which is what ChromeOS did. What advantage would the VM provide, other than the host OS having even less insight into what the application is doing? (Which is, by the way, exactly the only reason Android is introducing VMs: hiding stuff from the host Android)
- fragmede 2y ago
  That's not the reason. The host android has full access to the child VMs; the VM can't hide anything from the hypervisor. It's about isolation. The child VM can't leak your photos or contact list if it doesn't have it in the first place, and sticking things into their own VM provides an additional layer of isolation beyond what exists currently.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    I don't think that's true; my recollection, which appears to match https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architecture#hypervisor https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architec... , is that Android uses hardware support to run VMs that even the host kernel can't actually see into.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      fascinating link, thank you! The host android won't have access to the guest VMs but the hypervisor still does.
wiseowise 2y ago
> Your wording makes it sound like you think Google out of its way to break termux. What makes you believe that? They sure as hell don’t go out of their way to help keep it running.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
On the one hand, no, I don't think there's some whiteboard inside Google titled "master plan to make Termux stop working". On the other hand... so you know how on iOS, Apple has a policy of disallowing apps to have their own JIT? It probably does make the system more secure (JIT engines are historically a good place to find vulnerabilities), but it does so by prohibiting valid behavior and preventing entire classes of apps from existing. I'm on Android specifically because I don't think that's reasonable, so no, I'm not really cool with Google trying to rule out running Linux programs on a Linux distro (Android is a weird Linux distro, but it still is one). And a VM does help with security, but it also isn't a general solution; there are perfectly valid usecases that termux can do that a VM would either make needlessly difficult (little things like "open files" or "listen on a port") or impossible (get a root shell and invoke /system/bin/input for automation).
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It says rigth there on the NDK page, > Squeeze extra performance out of a device to achieve low latency or run computationally intensive applications, such as games or physics simulations. > Reuse your own or other developers' C or C++ libraries. Followed by https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis It is not on that list, it isn't supported.
freedomben 2y ago
Google seems to have fully bought into the philosophy that the user is a security threat. The devices are no longer about protecting the user from other threats, but also about protecting the device from the user. Termux is the type of application that enables the user to do stuff that the Google designers don't think is safe (like send SMS messages programmatically!) so maintaining the APIs it depends on is not a priority. I doubt anyone at Google is trying to break Termux, but they don't care about power users and they think Android should function like their iPhone and treat users accordingly.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  This is the only thing that is officially supported on the NDK, https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis If it isn't on that list, it works by luck and can be broken on any device or Android update.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    So you agree? Overly limited list to keep the user out of "trouble"? If that's not what you mean, I'm not sure how your link works as a reply to a comment on Google's motivation.

AshamedCaptain 2y ago

> It tries to provide an environment suitable for a legacy application model that doesn't really take security as seriously. Erm... what? > The only real way to win here is by using a VM which is what ChromeOS did. What advantage would the VM provide, other than the host OS having even less insight into what the application is doing? (Which is, by the way, exactly the only reason Android is introducing VMs: hiding stuff from the host Android)

fragmede 2y ago
That's not the reason. The host android has full access to the child VMs; the VM can't hide anything from the hypervisor. It's about isolation. The child VM can't leak your photos or contact list if it doesn't have it in the first place, and sticking things into their own VM provides an additional layer of isolation beyond what exists currently.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I don't think that's true; my recollection, which appears to match https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architecture#hypervisor https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/architec... , is that Android uses hardware support to run VMs that even the host kernel can't actually see into.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    fascinating link, thank you! The host android won't have access to the guest VMs but the hypervisor still does.

wiseowise 2y ago

> Your wording makes it sound like you think Google out of its way to break termux. What makes you believe that? They sure as hell don’t go out of their way to help keep it running.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

On the one hand, no, I don't think there's some whiteboard inside Google titled "master plan to make Termux stop working". On the other hand... so you know how on iOS, Apple has a policy of disallowing apps to have their own JIT? It probably does make the system more secure (JIT engines are historically a good place to find vulnerabilities), but it does so by prohibiting valid behavior and preventing entire classes of apps from existing. I'm on Android specifically because I don't think that's reasonable, so no, I'm not really cool with Google trying to rule out running Linux programs on a Linux distro (Android is a weird Linux distro, but it still is one). And a VM does help with security, but it also isn't a general solution; there are perfectly valid usecases that termux can do that a VM would either make needlessly difficult (little things like "open files" or "listen on a port") or impossible (get a root shell and invoke /system/bin/input for automation).

pjmlp 2y ago
It says rigth there on the NDK page, > Squeeze extra performance out of a device to achieve low latency or run computationally intensive applications, such as games or physics simulations. > Reuse your own or other developers' C or C++ libraries. Followed by https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis It is not on that list, it isn't supported.

freedomben 2y ago

Google seems to have fully bought into the philosophy that the user is a security threat. The devices are no longer about protecting the user from other threats, but also about protecting the device from the user. Termux is the type of application that enables the user to do stuff that the Google designers don't think is safe (like send SMS messages programmatically!) so maintaining the APIs it depends on is not a priority. I doubt anyone at Google is trying to break Termux, but they don't care about power users and they think Android should function like their iPhone and treat users accordingly.

pjmlp 2y ago
This is the only thing that is officially supported on the NDK, https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis If it isn't on that list, it works by luck and can be broken on any device or Android update.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  So you agree? Overly limited list to keep the user out of "trouble"? If that's not what you mean, I'm not sure how your link works as a reply to a comment on Google's motivation.