Install Visual Studio Code (actually code-server) on Android

README.md

1. Install Termux, an Android terminal emulator that provides a Linux execution environment and various tools.

2. Update system packages in Termux:

   $ pkg update -y

   

3. Install dependencies, including python, nodejs, and yarn:

   $ pkg install -y python nodejs yarn git

   

4. Install code-server, an adaptation of Visual Studio Code that runs as a web app using the following command. The installation may take a while:

   $ yarn global add code-server

   

5. Before starting code-server, we are going to fix an error caused by spdlog, which is a dependency of Visual Studio Code. First, change your working directory to ~/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/code-server/lib/vscode/node_modules/spdlog/:

   $ cd ~/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/code-server/lib/vscode/node_modules/spdlog/

   

6. You will need a text editor for the next step. Here Vim is used for this task, but you are free to use whatever text editor you love:

   $ pkg install vim

   

7. Open binding.gyp and enter edit mode. You can do this by pressing i once you open the file using Vim:

   $ vim binding.gyp

   

8. Add "libraries": [ "-latomic" ] below "target_name": "spdlog",. This helps spdlog compile on Android.

   "targets": [{
           "target_name": "spdlog",
   +       "libraries": [ "-latomic" ]
           "sources": [
                   "src/main.cc",
                   "src/logger.cc"
           ],

   

9. Save the file and quit text editor. You can do this by pressing ESC and then wq in Vim:

   

10. Recompile spdlog using the following command:

    $ npm install

    

11. (Optional) To see if spdlog works, run:

    $ npm test

12. To fix the file search function of code-server, install ripgrep via pkg and link it to the correct place:

    $ pkg install ripgrep -y
    $ cd ~/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/code-server/lib/vscode/node_modules/vscode-ripgrep/bin
    $ ln -s $(which rg) .

13. Finally, change the working directory back to home and start code-server with the following command:

    $ cd ~
    $ code-server --auth none --disable-telemetry

    

14. Now, you can open your browser and visit code-server at http://localhost:8080.

    

15. (Bonus) If you wish to visit this code-server from another device in the same local network, you can expose the HTTP service to all network interfaces by starting code-server with --bind-addr:

    $ code-server --bind-addr 0.0.0.0:8080 --disable-telemetry

    You can find the password under ~/.config/code-server/config.yaml:

    $ cat ~/.config/code-server/config.yaml

    

    You may also need to enable HTTPS to enable clipboard and others features of Visual Studio Code in browsers. To do this, install openssl-tool and let code-server generate a certificate on startup:

    $ pkg install openssl-tool
    $ code-server --bind-addr 0.0.0.0:8080 --cert --disable-telemetry

    

    You can get the public IP address of your device using the command below in Termux:

    $ ifconfig