Ubuntu – Emacs on phone (e.g. BQ or Meizu)

emacsphoneubuntu-touch

Is Emacs available on Ubuntu phones such as BQ or Meizu?

I heavily use a personalized orgmode (http://www.orgmode.org) as a kind of calendar with a wide range of applications such as running code snippets and planning tasks and so on.

I would love to have the calendar on the phone.

If Emacs is not available for phones is it at least possible to compile it on the phone or to cross-compile it on the computer for the phone? How difficult is this? Is there a guide on the internet on cross-compiling Emacs for phones?

Can Emacs be used with some kind of programmer's keyboard on the touch screen of Ubuntu phones?

EDIT: If one can believe http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/32jyst/after_2_weeks_on_ubuntu_phone/ installing emacs should be possible.

Best Answer

The installation of emacs is possible with the following commands:

sudo su
mount -o remount,rw /
apt-get install emacs

You need a passphrase or a number code for your phone and you need to install the com.ubuntu.terminal-app to input these commands. Emacs is also started from com.ubuntu.terminal.

Specification of my phone: BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu-Edition

# uname -a
Linux ubuntu-phablet 3.4.67 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 29 10:43:18 UTC 2015 8e13c5f armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

Attention: As far as I understand what I read before, updating the phone via GUI is no longer possible after that.

Currently, I am asking here whether updating via apt-get is a full replacement.

I am using the following configuration file ~/.config/com.ubuntu.terminal/Layouts/emacs.json for working with emacs using the built-in virtual keyboard. This configuration is far from ideal. I posted it here, since it is difficult to start without any emacs-adapted soft-keyboard on the console.

{
    "name" : "GNU emacs",
    "short_name" : "Emacs",

    "buttons": [
         {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "E",
                "key" : "Escape"
            }
        },
         {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "T",
                "key" : "Tab"
            }
        },
       {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cg",
                "key" : "G",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cx",
                "key" : "X",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
         {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cc",
                "key" : "C",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
       {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "C_",
                "key" : " ",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cf",
                "key" : "F",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cs",
                "key" : "S",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Mx",
                "key" : "X",
                "mod" : "Alt"
            }

        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cw",
                "key" : "W",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cy",
                "key" : "Y",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Mw",
                "key" : "W",
                "mod" : "Alt"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cv",
                "key" : "V",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cu",
                "key" : "U",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        },
        {
            "main_action" : {
                "type": "key",
                "text" : "Cw",
                "key" : "W",
                "mod" : "Control"
            }
        }
    ]
}
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