This is about installing Emacs into an Android device. See GoogleAndroid for tips about using Emacs to develop Android applications.
Some of them are hypothetical.
A first version of a native port was released August 2012. Quickly installable like any other Android app, with no need to root the mobile device. Key bindings, etc., work with physical keyboards -e.g. mini bluetooth keyboard- and External Keyboard Helper Pro app, or with on-screen Hacker’s Keyboard app. Init file: /sdcard/emacs/.emacs (optional). See Google Play: Emacs, and GitHub: zielmicha/emacs-android (Emacs port issues, etc.).
For a Linux and Emacs environment in a chrooted loopback filesystem on a rooted tablet, see Running Emacs on an Android tablet. Android apps such as ConnectBot? shell client and Hacker’s Keyboard (including Ctrl, etc. keys) can be used with Emacs in this way.
This is known to work, but you need to get root access to your tablet and remove Android. See below for some experiences with particular tablets.
This is by far the easiest and fastest way. It does not require uninstalling Android, and Emacs will run at normal speed.
You could also use VNC if you need graphics.
There are libre editors which can be extended to use Emacs key bindings, for instance:
There is a lot of online information for hacking HTC mobile phones on the xda-developers website. This includes the G1 and G2 google phones. One of these hacks is to get a full distribution such as Debian or Ubuntu running, on which you can then install Emacs :)
Check out the wiki to get an overview of hacking the G1, and how to flash the ROM etc.
First you need to root your phone.
Then you can update your ROM to a newer version. There are lots of different ROM updates available here. I recommend installing JesusFreke's ROMs initially, and then upgrading to the latest stable cyanogen ROM. If you make an ext2/3 partition on your SD card, then when you install the cyanogen ROM it will apply Apps2SD which allows you to install many more apps than normal. I also recommend using cyanogen's recovery image (which allows you to easily backup your phone). You will also need to install the latest radio image available here.
Read how to install new images and updates here.
Then have a look at these simple instructions on installing Debian (Note: you may need to alter the installer.sh script as mentioned in post #3566 here).
If you like it a little less “simple” and more solid, I’d rather recommend Bayle Shank’s instructions on installing debian into an ext partition by hand here, as parts of that installer are really bogus. In that case you’ll also have to enable compcache by hand, which Bayle Shank’s script doesn’t do, so you just paste his script into the “custom_shells” section of the user.conf obtained from [1]. Also you might want to use a non-root user for your emacs work, in that case [2] will help. – TauPan
Once you have Debian installed you can just “apt-get emacs” to install emacs 22.
To install Ubuntu instead, see here. He provides downloads for prebuilt Jaunty (9.04) images which makes it very easy to set up. Again it’s a simple matter to install emacs via apt-get.
I strongly recommend using ConnectBot in local mode as the terminal emulator, since it preserves the running terminal session even when you switch away to other apps and back, and also has some extremely convenient keybindings and many other great features – AdamSpiers
Here are some useful thoughts on reducing emacs' footprint for low-powered devices.
To access the android api from emacs you need to first install the android scripting environment which you can get here (see here for how to install apk files). Then get it working in your Debian installation: see here
With this recipe you can make phone calls from your bbdb buffer:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import android
import sys
droid = android.Android()
droid.callNumber(sys.argv[1]) (defun joebloggs/bbdb-android-dial (phone force-area-code)
"Dial the number at point.
If the point is at the beginning of a record, dial the first
phone number. Does not dial the extension. Does not apply the
transformations from bbdb-dial-local-prefix-alist if a prefix arg
is given."
(interactive (list (bbdb-current-field)
current-prefix-arg))
(if (eq (car-safe phone) 'name)
(setq phone (car (bbdb-record-phones (bbdb-current-record)))))
(if (eq (car-safe phone) 'phone)
(setq phone (car (cdr phone))))
(or (vectorp phone) (error "not on a phone field")) (let* ((number (bbdb-phone-string phone)) shortnumber)
(when (not force-area-code)
(let ((alist bbdb-dial-local-prefix-alist))
(while alist
(if (string-match (concat "^" (eval (caar alist))) number)
(setq shortnumber (concat (car (cdar alist))
(substring number (match-end 0)))
alist nil))
(setq alist (cdr alist))))) ;; cut off the extension
(if (string-match "x[0-9]+$" number)
(setq number (substring number 0 (match-beginning 0)))) ;; This is terrifically Americanized...
;; Leading 0 => local number (?)
(if (and (not shortnumber) bbdb-dial-local-prefix
(string-match "^0" number))
(setq number (concat bbdb-dial-local-prefix number))) ;; Leading + => long distance/international number
(if (and (not shortnumber) bbdb-dial-long-distance-prefix
(string-match "^\+" number))
(setq number (concat bbdb-dial-long-distance-prefix " "
(substring number 1)))) ;; use the short number if it's available
(setq number (or shortnumber number))
(if (not bbdb-silent-running)
(message "Dialing %s" number))
(shell-command (concat "export AP_PORT=$(netstat -napt|sed -n 's/^tcp.*127.0.0.1:\\([0-9]*\\).*LISTEN.*ase$/\\1/gp');/root/android/dialnumber.py " number))))With this recipe you can send text messages from emacs:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import android
import sys
droid = android.Android()
droid.sendTextMessage(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2])