GrapheneOS as a tinkering platform

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Hello,

I'm interested in running a webserver against android and remote access into the device via ssh and similar. I'd like to tinker around. However, I think the primary focus of most Android platforms are to be used as a phone first, and my interests are afterthoughts.

Is it reasonable for me to use GrapheneOS as a tinkering platform? Or should I choose another Android platform?

Regarding Graphene, Are there some development features which might make it easier for me to configure and control the device as I'm tinkering?

nazar-pc

discord You can install SSH server on GrapheneOS, but it is very much locked down anti-tinkering OS with strong focus on security, so you have much less things to tinker with.
It is also quite an expensive one at that. If you want to tinker with Aarch64 OS get SBC like Raspberry PI or one of numerous alternatives.

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nazar-pc

Thanks for sharing. Yes, perhaps SSH server is sort of a crude idea for GrapheneOS.

Perhaps I came across this with the wrong discussion.

I will likely try to develop an application for some android platform as raspberry pi doesn't fit my needs.

Thanks.

discord

So the hypothesis of this post perhaps didn't line up with what I wanted. https://xyproblem.info/

I'd like to develop android applications and possibly aarch64 ports. openssh was just a means to an end. And there might be better development tools. Without terribly much experience developing for android ( a little tinkering ) , I am unaware regarding the tooling.

I'm also trying to disambiguate between the tools used for Graphene Dev and the ones used for android development and what will work with which platform. Perhaps all the regular android development tools just work with GrapheneOS.

For example it looks like I might be able to install custom packages using adb https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb#pm

Then I also should be able to use adb shell to run tests from the platform https://developer.android.com/studio/test/command-line

Then it might not be necessecary to use openssh. However it looks like if I find some use in building openssh and including it for my local GrapheneOS deployment I would take a look at https://grapheneos.org/build and could build the platform so I might include the installation of that aarch64 package or others.

I still don't know some things. Can the adb shell package manager be used to deploy native aarch64 binary pacakges for development? Or should I just build them along with GrapheneOS?

I clearly haven't looked around enough. But it looks like I am interested in building on an android platform. GrapheneOS is one of many, but it looks organized and with a security focus. I'll try to ask more targeted questions and not create "XY problem" posts.

But if there is any suggestions or shared expreince regarding deploying binaries quickly for development and testing procedures, I am interested.

unwat

discord Can the adb shell package manager be used to deploy native aarch64 binary pacakges for development? Or should I just build them along with GrapheneOS?

If I understand the question correctly, if you're building a regular binary it needs to be added when building Android. The adb package manager is set up to install apks

I guess the best way to approach your problem all depends on what you want to achieve. If you want native code included in an app, there are ways to do that. Here's a page covering how to add native code to an app: https://developer.android.com/studio/projects/add-native-code. I've had success writing Rust code and adding it to an Android app using FFI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_function_interface

If you want to build a binary, add it to Android, then have the OS use that binary somehow, then that would be a lot of work. I don't know how, nor have I found a lot of documentation on how to do that. You'd probably have to read through some AOSP code to figure out how they do that.