History of (Termux) PRoot

[b9Joker108]

Dear Michal

I noted that you ported proot to Termux on Android, and also currently maintain the package as well. I was wondering if I could find out about what you know of the history of the package. I am writing a book and it includes, in passing, a lot of history and development of *NIX packages, softwares and applications. I can't find much on the history of PRoot, but I note that it is the copyright of STMicroelectronics. I would really appreciate details and your time.

This is what I am writing:
https://github.com/b9Joker108/a.fable.of.the.scriptkiddie.scriptoria/blob/main/A%20Fable%20of%20the%20Scriptkiddie%20Scriptoria%20(GitHub%20test).md

I await your advice

Thanking you in anticipation
Beauford

[michalbednarski]

As far as STMicroelectronics goes I don't know history, nor mine/Termux port of PRoot for Android was first one, although for some time that version of PRoot had widest supported device range

As for me, at university, partially as a joke and partially as an alternative to running my code on university server and/or replacing Windows installed on my laptop, I've been using Termux to run code I've written for my classes (using php -S, vim, gcc and gdb that were available in Termux repositories, ssh-ing into my phone from Windows 8 laptop)

Few times during that I've found Termux versions of packages had missing patches for path changes and after doing that two times I've found somewhere around Termux docs or discussions (perhaps it was this issue) about PRoot, for which Fornwall had prepared package stub for in disabled-packages, but application didn't actually work within Termux

Anyway you might want to also look at following Pull Requests / Issues

• My first pull request to Termux PRoot, I added patches necessary for PRoot to run under Termux (continuing from patches by Fornwall needed to make PRoot compile for Termux): Make PRoot work termux/termux-packages#173
• Second pull request, where I'm fixing issue which didn't occur on my phone, after few attempts works, amount of Termux-specific PRoot patches grown enough that Fornwall decided to make separate repo for Termux version of PRoot: proot: Work around inability to use change syscall termux/termux-packages#390

For some time I've been fixing issues and incompatibilities that people have reported in PRoot, I'm still doing that when I can, although nowadays issue tracker is full of reports that either I cannot reproduce (as they only occur on devices I don't have) or would require larger implementation that I currently can do (namespaces / squashfs / fuse)

Termux PRoot repository was created without importing commit history from original repo, that might not been good move, but at this point it is probably not worth fixing

After some time of upstream proot being inactive I've been reached to by maintainers to help upstreaming some of my changes. Not sure how it exactly went though as at that point neither of us had too much time available

[b9Joker108]

Michal, thank you so much for the detail and in getting back to me. 😊