Why Termux doesn't use Android system binaries from /bin?

[korpe1]

AFAIK Android gives read access to /bin, etc, so why termux doesn't use them? For example /bin/ls seems well-working binary, but Termux uses /data/data/com.termux[...]/ls.

[agnostic-apollo]

The /system/bin core binaries are primarily provided by toybox and lot of them do not exist on older android versions or lack features or are severely broken. Termux core binaries are provided by GNU coreutils and they are the same for all android versions via termux packages repo, and have latest features and bugs get fixed with updates and are same as what linux distros like debian provide so that termux has a consistent environment with them.

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/shell_and_utilities/README.md

https://landley.net/toybox/

[Biswa96]

agonstic-apollo mentioned that. for example, compare the help output of any programs - the /system/bin ones have less features and command line options. Also, dependencies may not have all functions exported - imagine running programs from LTS distributions in rolling release distribution.

[korpe1]

agonstic-apollo mentioned that. for example, compare the help output of any programs - the /system/bin ones have less features and command line options. Also, dependencies may not have all functions exported - imagine running programs from LTS distributions in rolling release distribution.

Yeah, but e.g. toybox ls isn't dependency for any binary, right? I understand, if I run a script from Termux repos that depends spesific version of e.g. grep command it can break, but I think binaries of Termux should be just fine.

[Biswa96]

Yeah, the fact that things break or not depends on the use cases.

[korpe1]

Yeah, but please give me an example of what can breaks if I add /system/bin to my $PATH? What are the use cases you refered to in your comment? I think executable binary programs doesn't depend on each other at all. I think it can break only shell scripts.

[korpe1]

ping @Biswa96