[GekkePrutser]

But this is just not feasible for something like termux. Termux is the equivalent of a Linux distribution on Android. If they would let that go there would be no reason for it to exist.

The Android way would be to publish all packages individually on the app store. Termux has tens of thousands of packages. This would simply be insane and Google wouldn't permit it.

[pjmlp]

It is, there are Java APIs for most of the stuff they want to do, use JNI instead of Linux syscalls.

[GekkePrutser]

That was one of the issues yes. The execve() thing.

But a bigger problem is that an app is not allowed to modify its own files anymore, and is not allowed to run executables from 'data' storage. This is much harder to work around:

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/FAQ

Even if they work around the execve thing, Google will probably refuse them in the store when they run executables not included in the APK. And the question is what will be locked down in future Android versions. Android 12 is already iffy according to the above FAQ. That's why I'm worried about it

Fwiw: I don't think Google is actively trying to kill it, no. But it's just not something needed for most apps so they don't want to facilitate it.

[pjmlp]

Except execve() isn't part of public APIs, people keep mixing up ISO C with POSIX, and only the former is a public NDK API.