Re: Android port

[Po Lu]

Angelo Graziosi <angelo.g0@libero.it> writes:

> I gave a try to the F-Droid package installing it on a device with
> android 11. I use this device with mouse and keyboard (the delete key
> does not work in Emacs).
>
> I enabled Emacs to have access to all the files.
>
> When I start Emacs there is a notification [See (emacs) Android
> Environment for more details about this notification]: what it means
> is a mystery.

As it says, you should read the node ``Android Environment'' in the
Emacs manual.  This notification is displayed to prevent Emacs from
being killed after entering the background.

> The font on this system is too small and I would increase it as I do,
> for example, with my build on GNU/Linux. But How is this font called?
> I cannot establish this from Options - Set Default Font
>
> It seems that HOME (~/) is "/data/data/org.gnu/files" which cannot be
> accessed from, for example, Termux (this app has access to
> /data/data/com.termux/). So it is hard (but not impossible) to
> comunicate with the "external world" (for example to move an init.el,
> taken from another system, to ~/.emacs.d/: this would facilitate the
> setup of this android Emacs.

Android security policy prevents applications from accessing each others
home directories, so yes, it is not easy to access.

Copying an init.el from another system is best done through the system
file manager or by copying the files into Emacs's home directory via the
external storage.

File managers on most proprietary versions of Android refuse to display
Emacs's home directory, because they are more keen to display
advertisements than to actually manage files.

> In any case, I created a ~/.emacs.d/init.el and added something like
>
> (global-tab-line-mode 1)
>
> (setq tab-line-tabs-function 'tab-line-tabs-buffer-groups)
> (setq tab-line-close-tab-function 'kill-buffer)
>
> (setq auto-save-list-file-prefix nil)
>
> (column-number-mode 1)
> (delete-selection-mode 1)
> (electric-pair-mode 1)
> (savehist-mode 1)
> (tool-bar-mode -1)
>
> Needless to say, Emacs crashes all the time and I have to try many
> times to write that. And if I add

First, try with an up to date build.  Next, please show the output of
the following command with your device connected to a computer (once
again, this is described in the Android appendix of the Emacs manual, so
please read it.)

  adb logcat | grep android_run_debug_thread

> (desktop-save-mode 1)
>
> it crashes during startup, mainly if one want to load desktop file
> blocked by the lock file left there by previous crash..

I will look into that.

> BTW, the About Emacs says it is a
>
>   build 1, aarch64-unknown-linux-android220 of 2023-02-18
>
> Why 2023-02-18 if the package was made 10 days ago?

Android does not correctly report the date of an executable.
It is always the present.