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C#, VB, Ruby, F#, and Python on Android (via Mono and DLR)

This all works on stock/nonroot phones
I got Mono running on Android.
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2008/12/mono-on-android-success-at-last.html
Started working on Java/C# interop and found out that DLR works on Mono:
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/microsoft-dlr-and-mono-bring-python-and.html
As a result, you can write applications in Python and Ruby on Android too now.
Anyhow, if anyone else is interested in working on this project with me, please let me know! I've already gotten all the relevent source hosted at Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/androidmono. Basically the next bit of work involves implemeting a Java interop using the DLR.

Nifty.
As for Dalvik & JIT, I think dexopt already replaces some heavy usage calls with inline native code. Hopefully dalvik vm will get full JIT in the future?

This makes me very happy!!!
Thank you for your work!!

jashsu said:
Nifty.
As for Dalvik & JIT, I think dexopt already replaces some heavy usage calls with inline native code. Hopefully dalvik vm will get full JIT in the future?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't do any inline native replacements: dexopt optimizes the dex file. Which includes inline dex byte code replacements. There is no JIT at all, but Google said it would be something definitely on the horizon. Personally I think DEX is a pretty stupid move on Google's part; they could have just gone with CIL-- and write a Java compiler for that instead. The Mono JIT compiler works on many platforms; so V1 of Android could have been running JIT compiled native code with that route... which is an order of magnitude better in performance.
I'm going to be doing some performance comparisons of Mono vs Dalvik; Mono will obviously win, but it will be interesting to see the margin. I'll also experiment with binding Mono to the Android runtime to create Android applications in C#.
Optimization
Virtual machine interpreters typically perform certain optimizations the first time a piece of code is used. Constant pool references are replaced with pointers to internal data structures, operations that always succeed or always work a certain way are replaced with simpler forms. Some of these require information only available at runtime, others can be inferred statically when certain assumptions are made.
The Dalvik optimizer does the following:
For virtual method calls, replace the method index with a vtable index.
For instance field get/put, replace the field index with a byte offset. Also, merge the boolean / byte / char / short variants into a single 32-bit form (less code in the interpreter means more room in the CPU I-cache).
Replace a handful of high-volume calls, like String.length(), with "inline" replacements. This skips the usual method call overhead, directly switching from the interpreter to a native implementation.
Prune empty methods. The simplest example is Object.<init>, which does nothing, but must be called whenever any object is allocated. The instruction is replaced with a new version that acts as a no-op unless a debugger is attached.
Append pre-computed data. For example, the VM wants to have a hash table for lookups on class name. Instead of computing this when the DEX file is loaded, we can compute it now, saving heap space and computation time in every VM where the DEX is loaded.
All of the instruction modifications involve replacing the opcode with one not defined by the Dalvik specification. This allows us to freely mix optimized and unoptimized instructions. The set of optimized instructions, and their exact representation, is tied closely to the VM version.
Most of the optimizations are obvious "wins". The use of raw indices and offsets not only allows us to execute more quickly, we can also skip the initial symbolic resolution. Pre-computation eats up disk space, and so must be done in moderation.
There are a couple of potential sources of trouble with these optimizations. First, vtable indices and byte offsets are subject to change if the VM is updated. Second, if a superclass is in a different DEX, and that other DEX is updated, we need to ensure that our optimized indices and offsets are updated as well. A similar but more subtle problem emerges when user-defined class loaders are employed: the class we actually call may not be the one we expected to call.
These problems are addressed with dependency lists and some limitations on what can be optimized.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Koush said:
Personally I think DEX is a pretty stupid move on Google's part; they could have just gone with CIL-- and write a Java compiler for that instead. The Mono JIT compiler works on many platforms; so V1 of Android could have been running JIT compiled native code with that route... which is an order of magnitude better in performance.
I'm going to be doing some performance comparisons of Mono vs Dalvik; Mono will obviously win, but it will be interesting to see the margin. I'll also experiment with binding Mono to the Android runtime to create Android applications in C#.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google had different objectives, they didn't go after maximum performance. Remember, that handsets have different constrains than desktops and laptops. So they went after minimizing RAM usage (byte code interpreter => maximum possible sharing of read-only memory pages among processes) and battery life. Performance had to be acceptable, not priority.
You would not be able to fit everything into RAM if you used Mono and you would get the patent problems with Net/Mono/etc as a bonus.

lu_tze said:
Google had different objectives, they didn't go after maximum performance. Remember, that handsets have different constrains than desktops and laptops. So they went after minimizing RAM usage (byte code interpreter => maximum possible sharing of read-only memory pages among processes) and battery life. Performance had to be acceptable, not priority.
You would not be able to fit everything into RAM if you used Mono and you would get the patent problems with Net/Mono/etc as a bonus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.NET, C#, IL, et al are all ECMA standards. Mono is LGPL/GPL. There are no patent or licensing issues with it that is unfamiliar to the OHA. They reuse plenty of open source projects.
An interpreter is not power efficient OR performant, simply due to the fact is it doing the 10 times as much work to do the same thing as native code. In addition, Mono features an Ahead Of Time compiler (AOT) that would let you compile everything to native code before it even hits the phone (or just once, and cache it). Most of Android's power and memory optimizations currently comes from Google's application life cycle (activities can be killed and resumed at the system's whim) -- that has nothing to do with Dalvik. I'm not criticizing the API or the implementation, just the runtime.
They could have spent their time making the Mono runtime play nicely with the shared memory subsystem.
I'm rebuilding mono with a minimal configuration to check out the disk and memory footprint.

Koush said:
Not that most of you will care, but I got Mono running on Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm a noob.... how can I install this? Very good Job Kush!

pic.micro23 said:
I'm a noob.... how can I install this? Very good Job Kush!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't released anything yet. I'm trying to figure out how to statically link all it's dependencies, minimize the size, bind to the Android runtime, convert DEX to CIL and then CIL to ARM, and all sorts of other goodness. Basically a lot of experimenting to do before anything is "released". It's just in proof of concept phase right now.

Dalvik sucks
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/dalvik-vs-mono.html

Koush said:
Dalvik sucks
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/dalvik-vs-mono.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol. nice article Koush. It's surprising mono is that much faster

Koush said:
I haven't released anything yet. I'm trying to figure out how to statically link all it's dependencies, minimize the size, bind to the Android runtime, convert DEX to CIL and then CIL to ARM, and all sorts of other goodness. Basically a lot of experimenting to do before anything is "released". It's just in proof of concept phase right now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just read the dalvik vs mono article. It's certainly interesting work. I agree that by ignoring JIT they're certainly not going after the most beneficial optimizations. That said, I don't think it's something they've completely excluded from future implementation.
I think you should consider trying to get Mono added as an external project. If nothing, having unofficial support for a vm which supports C#/CIL could bring in a significant amount of developer interest from the WinMo dev community. The coretech team would be the folks to set up a new project.

I've now gotten mono working on all G1s. You don't need Debian OR root. Still a couple kinks to work out, but I have it on the market for anyone interested in playing with it. More information at the link below.
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/mono-for-android-now-available-on.html

I thought this was only a platform for development but its made my g1 much faster and reduced memory from steel and stock browsers as well. My market is still 12 mb and mono is about 11 mb. Is this normal?
Also everytime, I run mono, does it do the same thing it does the first time it was installed and opened?
Sorry, i know nothing about mono but i can tell its definitely optimizing the performance on the g1 though.
great work koushe,
hbguy

This awesome, I have been waiting to see how this all turned out after reading your first post about it a few days ago.

hbguy said:
I thought this was only a platform for development but its made my g1 much faster and reduced memory from steel and stock browsers as well. My market is still 12 mb and mono is about 11 mb. Is this normal?
Also everytime, I run mono, does it do the same thing it does the first time it was installed and opened?
Sorry, i know nothing about mono but i can tell its definitely optimizing the performance on the g1 though.
great work koushe,
hbguy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Koush would know more than I would, but installing mono shouldn't affect everything else on Android. It's not like everything is suddenly using mono instead of dalvik. I suspect you have a strong case of the placebo effect

hbguy said:
I thought this was only a platform for development but its made my g1 much faster and reduced memory from steel and stock browsers as well. My market is still 12 mb and mono is about 11 mb. Is this normal?
Also everytime, I run mono, does it do the same thing it does the first time it was installed and opened?
Sorry, i know nothing about mono but i can tell its definitely optimizing the performance on the g1 though.
great work koushe,
hbguy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, you're just imagining things I haven't even attempted like DEX->CIL yet.
The first APK of Mono is quite large though. I've updated it with a number of bug fixes and also am making it use eglib now. This trimmed the size by a few MB. Getting Mono to work with Bionic might not be possible... (that would trim off another 2MB).
Once again, the APK is just a developers release... something to play with and test.

I have been messing with mono on my G1.
Is it safe to say it will only work with command line apps?
I got my own hello world and a few other things running, but if I try and run any sort of gui I get errors.

Yes, only command line stuff will work. WinForms will not work on Android.
However, you should be able to get OpenGL ES working via PInvoke. I haven't tried it, but it should work just fine.

Koush said:
Yes, only command line stuff will work. WinForms will not work on Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what I thought, I think PInvoke is just a bit out of my skill set.
Thanks for the work none the less.

I got mono building in the Android build environment, and the Mono team accepted a patch to make it work on Android. There's also some changes external to Mono which can be found at the androidmono google code repository:
http://code.google.com/p/androidmono/

adding libraries/headers

I'm trying to work with gtk for c. I downloaded c4droid and wrote a small GUI program and I need to include and or add gtk/gtk.h I also wrote a server that uses the errno header but produces errors because the header is not installed/included. BTW i downloaded busybody pro too. So how do I solve this issue?

I have figured out the include issue. I found the include folder and seen that errno.h is in there. To make a long story short the issue was downloading the gcc plugin for c4droid then going in to preferences and setting the compiler to gcc-Bionic. But now the server I wrote wont work properly because you have to run it with CLA's. Example: ./server [IP address] <port number> and c4droid doesn't allow this. Not that I'm aware of at least. They this app is perfect for developers. I would agree that it is suitable for programmers just starting off and just learning. Like a college student....Maybe. it was only a dollar 50, so not a big loss. Currently looking for a gnu gcc port for the terminal. Like the iPhone 4. God I miss that thing! Ideas/insight?

I think you'd have better luck posting in general development thread.

Ok thanks.

Can't post in that sub forum until I have 10 posts. Sucks!

Post number 9.

Here's number 10 and I'm off to the development forum.

Looks like I need one more post.

[Release] RT Jailbreak Tool

RT Jailbreak Tool
By Netham45, Version 1.20
An all-in-one program to jailbreak Windows RT tablets using the method recently released by clrokr​
Usage
Boot your RT device and log in, allow it to sit on the desktop for about a minute.
Extract all files out of the latest version of the .ZIP attached to this post. To do this on Windows RT, right-click on the .zip, choose 'Extract all', and select the destination folder.
Run runExploit.bat. It'll prompt you to either install the jailbreak to run on login, uninstall it not to, or run the jailbreak once.
Choose an option and follow all subsequent prompts. They're all quite easy and self-explanatory.
FAQ
Q) What does this do, in layman's terms?
A) It allows non-Microsoft ARM-compiled .exes to run on the desktop. That is it.
Update (03/01/2013): The jailbreak now allows unsigned drivers to load.
Q) Can I use this to run Photoshop, Steam, AutoCAD, <Insert commercial product here>?
A) While it is -technically- possible for the companies to port their stuff over to Windows RT using the hack it is extremely unlikely. As a rule of thumb, if it's a commercial piece of software it won't run on the ARM.
Q) Can I use this to run PuTTY, VNC, X-Chat, <Insert open-source product here>?
A) Yes! Open-source programs are ones that you, having the source code, can recompile to work on the ARM. If it's not already available (A small but growing number of programs are) it's easy to get started. There are some useful threads in the Windows 8 Development and Hacking board on XDA-Developers.
Please note that not all programs can reasonably be ported over to ARM, due to either program complexity, overuse of inline assembly, or the current lack of a GNU Compiler
Q) Can I use this to run any random x86 app I find on the internet?
A) No. Apps must be recompiled for ARM. Stop asking why Chrome doesn't run.
Q) Can I use this to hack my Android tablet?
A) Not really. Most Android hacks require custom kernel-mode drivers (APX, Odin, ADB all require drivers that are unavailable), and this hack only allows us to run unsigned User-mode code.
If you don't know the difference between User-mode and Kernel-mode, I'm sure Wikipedia has a good article on the subject.
Q) Will Chrome/Firefox be ported over?
A) I don't see any major technical hurdles for those, but I probably won't be the one to do it.
Q) Are there any precompiled apps for this available?
A) Check out THIS THREAD for a list of all currently known compiled apps.
Q) I ran the jailbreak, now where can I download pirated apps from?
A) Nowhere. This jailbreak does not allow for pirated apps, and it is a long ways off from actually supporting pirated apps. If you manage to get pirated apps to run on Windows RT you will be doing the entire community a large disservice, along with ruining what credibility this hack may have in Microsoft's eyes.
Q) I don't know how to recompile code, can I get someone else to do it?
A) If it's a simple project you can likely find someone who will be more than happy to recompile it for you. If it's a large project with numerous dependencies, or a commercial project, I will be willing to take a look at it and quote a price to do it. (On that note, please realize that I am not affiliated with XDA-Developers at all.)
Q) I keep BSoD'ing! What's up?
A) I haven't managed to track down the cause of the BSoDs, except that they seem to happen when the exploit is ran within the first minute or so of the tablet booting and logging in. If you're getting BSoDs, boot your tablet to the desktop and wait 2 or 3 minutes before trying the exploit. Also, make sure that you're up to date with Windows Updates, as of 2/26/2013.
Q) I ran the .bat and it told me it couldn't find it's bin folder. What's wrong?
A) Extract the ZIP in entirety. Don't just open the ZIP and double-click on the runExploit.bat.
Q) It's not working! What do?
A) Post in this thread describing what you're doing and the issue you're having, do not PM me, even if you don't have the number of posts to post in the developer sections. I'll consider it spam and disregard it. Don't message me on Twitter either, the only place that I will provide support for this tool is in this thread.
Q) Is this persistent across reboots?
A) No, it resets every time the device reboots.
Q) Is this a tethered exploit?
A) No. Tethering is connecting the device to a computer, or other device to jailbreak it. This is done entirely on the device. It just has to be redone at reboot.
Q) Will this work with all the latest updates, as of 02/26/2013?
A) There was an updated .zip posted for the latest update (Patch Tuesday, Feburary 2013.) It should work.
Q) How do I compile apps for the Surface RT? It says I'm missing a bunch of .libs!
A) Visual Studio 2012 does not come with all the required ARM .libs for compiling most desktop apps. Please see THIS post by _peterdn for a useful utility for generating .libs and .exps from the .dlls on the tablet.
Q) Why would you want desktop apps? They suck for touch.
A) Mainly for the library of easily ported software, along with the things that metro apps just can't do. I agree, they're more inconvenient to use with touch, but that's the tradeoff for having a huge library of software. You also don't have to use desktop mode, the tablet still is quite good without it (Except the mail client). I also believe that since it's my device I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what MS says. Traditionally MS has leaned the same way with Windows, which makes it rather disappointing they chose to lock this platform down.
Q) Will this void my warranty?
A) Since it doesn't persist across reboots chances are the support center will never know, though it may be against the terms of your devices warranty.
Q) Is there any warranty for this program?
A) No express or implied warranty exists.
Q) Your hack caused the paint to chip off my tablet, the felt to peel off my type keyboard, the kickstand to fall off, and my tablet to display nothing but satanic messages while it's on! I want you to buy me a new one!
A) No it didn't, and see my warranty policy.
Q) Can Microsoft patch this?
A) Yes and no. They can patch it through Windows Update, but since we have the ability to reinstall from recovery partitions we can revert any Windows Updates they release.
Q) Will this allow people to run viruses on my tablet?
A) Yes and no, if something malicious is compiled and ran while jailbroken it could act like a virus, yes. Once you reset, though, it'll be gone.
Q) I came across a malicious RT application! Who do I tell?
A) If it's a jailbroken application then the most you can do is make a post informing about it. That's one downside to having unsigned code, there's no one regulating body who can decide what is and isn't available, and manage safety. If it's a store application then I suggest you contact Microsoft. If it's a Modern UI app that requires the jailbreak to run you still may have luck contacting Microsoft, as they can blacklist the developer's certificate.
Q) Can any random Store app do this?
A) No, this requires tools and privileges that Windows Store apps can't possess. The appcontainer model that MS uses is very strict and good at preventing things like this from happening. There's a number of things that flat-out aren't possible to do from a Store app that this uses, not to mention that it would get rejected by MS.
Q) Will I (The user) get my developer license banned?
A) It's possible, though I doubt that MS will do that.
Update: With the new payload (as of 1/18/2013) users no longer need to get their own developer certificate.
Q) Won't you (Netham45) get your developer license banned?
A) Time will tell, I knew the risk when I posted this. I suspect that their banning system is more geared towards piracy, though, which this doesn't really enable.
Update: With the new payload (as of 1/18/2013) my developer certificate is no longer required.
Q) I've got this great feature/idea for the jailbreak! Where can I tell you at?
A) Post it in this thread. Note that the area where we can script and such before the exploit is limited and restricted to pretty much batch scripts, and that I am under no obligation to implement a feature if you suggest it. And, seriously, do not PM me about it. If you don't have the prerequisite number of posts to post in the developer section then go get them.
Q) Can I throw money at you for writing the tool to automate this?
A) There's a donate link on the side of this post. (I'd love to get a Surface Pro. )
Q) Can I throw money at clrokr for documenting the exploit?
A) You'll have to talk to him about that.Here's his profile.
FAQ last updated 2/26/2013 10:17 PM MST
Thanks to clrokr for documenting the usage of the exploit, and to the numerous people who contributed positively in the [Q] Hacking Windows RT to Run Desktop Apps thread
Download is attached to this post.
Update log
Update 1.01(1/10/2013): Uncommented pause in the PS script to install the ModernUI app -- It was causing it not to prompt to install a developer license/my cert for some reason.
Update 1.02(1/10/2013): Fixed issue on non-English devices.
Update 1.03(1/11/2013): Fixed issue with usernames with spaces in them, fixed issue where the user running the jailbreak isn't the first user logged in
Update 1.1(1/18/2013): Redid functionality; it now gets the kernel base inside the payload, instead of requiring a Metro application. Added a startup folder that gets ran after jailbreak. Cleaned up output. Click for more info
Update 1.11(1/18/2013): Added commandline options, added a simple interface to handle creating scheduled tasks to run, added a powershell script to keep it from running if the system hasn't been up for two minutes, added missing startup folder, added sanity check so it doesn't freak out if the startup folder isn't there
Update 1.12(2/12/2013): Fixed the scheduled task to not require AC power to run, tweaked script to not crash on latest patches, Fixed startup folder not getting executed properly
Update 1.12a(2/12/2013): Fixed it to actually work on the latest updates. Oops.
Update 1.13(2/14/2013): Added the ability to dynamically get the signing level. It now requires internet on the first launch, and after an update changes ntoskrnl.exe. This version is slightly experimental, so if it doesn't work use one of the older versions.
Update 1.13a(2/15/2013): Tweaked the script to return from the hook in a way that seems more robust. If 1.12a or 1.13 work for you there's no need for an update.
Update 1.20(3/01/2013): Made the bat use registry keys instead of files in system32, added registry-based startup folder, altered payload to support unlocking kernel-mode code
Click here to download the latest version​
Older versions may be downloaded here
(Note: If you wish to mirror this post please retain a link to it at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158 so users can always get the latest version.)

Nice job! Good to have an all-in-one. Is this tool using the decrement by 0x80000 or trying the option of a slightly lesser decrement?
Also, it would be good to have a unified selection of RT-compiled desktop apps. I'm working on porting Pidgin (the Windows Store IM clients kind of suck...) but it's not easy; the "build under Windows" instructions boil down to "make your Windows system as Unix-y as possible, then build it there". There may be a way to target RT from GCC, but I am not aware of it.
EDIT: What I meant to say is, perhaps a thread linking all the various apps that people have built (preferably with links to their source, for those of us mildly paranoid types who like to see what other peoples' code is doing on our systems) would be a good idea.

GoodDayToDie said:
Nice job! Good to have an all-in-one. Is this tool using the decrement by 0x80000 or trying the option of a slightly lesser decrement?
Also, it would be good to have a unified selection of RT-compiled desktop apps. I'm working on porting Pidgin (the Windows Store IM clients kind of suck...) but it's not easy; the "build under Windows" instructions boil down to "make your Windows system as Unix-y as possible, then build it there". There may be a way to target RT from GCC, but I am not aware of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm decrementing by 0x7EFF0, it seems to not get the 0x18 bugcheck at all with that number. The one it gets if you run it too soon is a different bugcheck.

Install Fails
Brilliant!
I tried running it but it keeps going in an endless cycle because the Metro app fails to install.
Using a Surface with the latest patches from Microsoft.

merill said:
Brilliant!
I tried running it but it keeps going in an endless cycle because the Metro app fails to install.
Using a Surface with the latest patches from Microsoft.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it give you any error messages when it fails to install?

netham45 said:
Does it give you any error messages when it fails to install?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When installing the metro app, the installation fails because the certificate isn't added to the cert-store by default and the batch just tries again.
I uncommented the #Pause in PrintMessageAndExit to read the error message and that made it possible to choose to install the certificate, the powershell just closed otherwise.
After that the metro app installs fine, and tries to start it. I can see the app start, though the cmd still doesn't recognize it and tries to install it again...
I wrote my own metro app for that today and installed it instead of yours and it worked fine with mine.
My App is just this:
protected override void OnFileActivated(FileActivatedEventArgs args) {
WriteAddress((StorageFile)args.Files[0]);
}
private async void WriteAddress(StorageFile file) {
using (Stream s = await file.OpenStreamForWriteAsync()) {
using (StreamWriter wrt = new StreamWriter(s)) {
uint adr = GetKernelAddress.Address.Get() + 0x19FFBC;
await wrt.WriteAsync((adr & 255).ToString("X2") + " " + ((adr >> 8) & 255).ToString("X2") + " " + ((adr >> 16) & 255).ToString("X2") + " " + ((adr >> 24) & 255).ToString("X2"));
}
}
App.Current.Exit();
}
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

sebmaster16 said:
When installing the metro app, the installation fails because the certificate isn't added to the cert-store by default and the batch just tries again.
I uncommented the #Pause in PrintMessageAndExit to read the error message and that made it possible to choose to install the certificate, the powershell just closed otherwise.
After that the metro app installs fine, and tries to start it. I can see the app start, though the cmd still doesn't recognize it and tries to install it again...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Having the same issue, uncommenting the pause seems to fix it all for me. I'll update the zip in the top in just a second.
Edit: New zip with that uncommented uploaded.

Metro app failed to run. Trying to (re)install the metro app...
Found certificate: C:\Users\Merill\Downloads\RT_Jailbreak\bin\ModernUI_App\Get Kernel Base_1.0.
Before installing this package, you need to do the following:
- Install the signing certificate
Cannot invoke method. Method invocation is supported only on core types in this language mode.
At C:\Users\Merill\Downloads\RT_Jailbreak\bin\ModernUI_App\Add-AppDevPackage.ps1:497 char:9
+ $IsAlreadyElevated = ([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent() ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: ) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MethodInvocationNotSupportedInConstrainedLanguage

merill said:
Metro app failed to run. Trying to (re)install the metro app...
Found certificate: C:\Users\Merill\Downloads\RT_Jailbreak\bin\ModernUI_App\Get Kernel Base_1.0.
Before installing this package, you need to do the following:
- Install the signing certificate
Cannot invoke method. Method invocation is supported only on core types in this language mode.
At C:\Users\Merill\Downloads\RT_Jailbreak\bin\ModernUI_App\Add-AppDevPackage.ps1:497 char:9
+ $IsAlreadyElevated = ([Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent() ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: ) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MethodInvocationNotSupportedInConstrainedLanguage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try the new zip I just uploaded, I believe I fixed that.
Edit: I see what happened. The file that MS distributes has a signature at the bottom which allows it to make unrestricted system calls and when I commented out the pause I broke that.

Very Nice job! Thank you again!

Yahoo!!! Works. Have PuTTY running. Now to get all ARM compatible apps in one place!

merill said:
Yahoo!!! Works. Have PuTTY running. Now to get all ARM compatible apps in one place!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear it's working.
Now, 6 AM, time to go to bed.

merill said:
Yahoo!!! Works. Have PuTTY running. Now to get all ARM compatible apps in one place!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree! If anyone gets Utorrent working ill be eternally greatful
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

vincepg13 said:
I agree! If anyone gets Utorrent working ill be eternally greatful
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With 7Zip, Putty and an .Net 4.0 FTP Uploader app... all I need now is a Transmission console and I no longer really need my laptop.
Would be great to associate .torrent with Transmission on the Surface.
What other "needed" apps that are projects (like SourceForge) that people can think of?
MediaInfo would be handy... wonder if it could also integrate with explorer...
Perhaps this discussion needs its own thread

I'm actually starting a thread for this topic... but since we're here, one thing that would be awesome (instantly add support for a ton of software) would be a Java runtime. Unfortunately, they're huge and complex beasts, and tend to either require assembly or be buildable only on Linux (sometimes both...).

in asus vivo tab rt , I can not go where I say,
please press the volume down now

Silverlight ideally. But it sounds like thats a no go.
Also Chrome or Firefox would be good!
Filezilla would also be nice.
Nice work guys.

It works, but I still get the SmartScreen filter when I try to run apps from Explorer. When I run them from command line, it works fine.
I believe there's a registry entry that needs to be changed, but I don't remember what it is.

randomned said:
It works, but I still get the SmartScreen filter when I try to run apps from Explorer. When I run them from command line, it works fine.
I believe there's a registry entry that needs to be changed, but I don't remember what it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in the pop up, click more info then click 'run anyway' - itll never bother you again for that app.

will this work with the latest updates installed

Porting Chromium to Windows RT

So, I've been at this for about 48 hours now (not continuously, but closer than you might think) and I figured I should take a break from modifying project files and puzzling over alignment issues to discuss the project, share some of the problems I've been having and ask if anybody can help, and so on.
The general idea is "Chromium build for Windows (on x86/x64) and build on ARM (for Linux), so there must be a way to build it for Windows on ARM". For the most part, that even looks like it's true. Probably at least 80% of 654 Visual Studio projects (no, that's not a joke) either build just fine with only minor amounts of work, or are things that we don't actually need (I'll try building the test suites... once everything else builds!!)
Areas that have given me problems (caution: some chance of brief rants ahead):
v8. Less than you might think, though. Setting the flags for Arm seems to have been enough.
Sandbox. There's a fair bit of thunking coded in assembly going on in the sandbox for x86. Not sure what's up with it (I don't know exactly how the Chromium sandbox works) but it'll have to come out or be replaced. The Linux (including ARM) sandbox seems to be SELinux-based, which doesn't help at all.
Native Client (NaCl). I think all the assembly is in test code, though, so I may just boldly #ifdef if all away.
libjpg-turbo (libjpg). Piles of carefully optimized assembly... for x86 and x64. There is a set of ARM assembly (for Linux) that Visual Studio won't compile, but something else might... or I may tweak until it works. Of course, I could also just accept the speed hit and use the version of libjpg implemented in nice, portable C.
Anything where the developers tried to use some SSE to speed things up. I may be able to replace it with NEON code, or I may just remove it and hope **** doesn't break. We'll see.
Inline assembly in general. Even when it's ARM assembly, Visual Studio / CL.exe don't want anything to do with it (__asm is apparently now an invalid keyword). I suspect I'll have to just pull the assembly out into stand-alone functions in their own files, then compile them to object files and link them back in later. If I can figure out the best way to do this (for example, I'll want to inline the asm functions) then it shouldn't impact performance. Seriously though, I kind of hate inline assembly. I can read assembly just fine, but I'm usually staring at it in a debugger or disassembly tool, not in the middle of source code I'm trying to build...
Everywhere that the current state of the CPU is cared about (exception and crash handlers, in particular) because the CONTEXT structure is, of course, CPU-specific. They're pretty easy to get past, though.
Low-level functions, like MemoryBarrier. Fortunately, it's implemented in ntdll.h... but as a macro, which breaks at least half the places it's referenced. Solution: where it breaks things, undefine the macro and just have it be an inline function that does what the macro did.
Running out of memory. Not even joking... well, OK, a little bit. I've got 32GB; I won't actually run out. Both Visual Studio and cl.exe do at times, though!. Task Manager says VS is currently using 1,928 MB, and before I restarted it, it broke 2.5GB private working set. Pretty good for a program that for some reason is still 32-bit...
Goddamn compiler flags. Seriously, every single project (I mentioned there are over 600, right?) has its LIBPATHs hardcoded to point at x86. Several projects have /D:_X86_ or similar (that's supposed to be set by the build tools, not the user, you idiots...) which plays merry hell with the #ifdef guards. Everything has /SAFESEH specified, not in the actual property table where the IDE could have removed it (unneeded and invlaid on ARM) but in the "extra stuff we'll pass on the build command line" field, which means every single .EXE/.DLL project must be modified or the linker will fail.
My current biggest goal is the JPG library; nobody wants to use a browser without it. After that, I'll tackle the sandbox, leaving NaCl for last... well, last before whatever else crops up.
Anyhow, thoughts/comments/advice are welcome... in the mean time, I'm going to go eat something (for the first time in ~22 hours) and then get some sleep.

Kudos for having the patience to look though this monster.
It's my understanding that NaCl is still a pretty niche thing at the moment. Is it possible to easily either disable it or completely hack it out, or do other more critical parts of Chromium now depend on it?

I don't think anything truly depends on it. I'll look in the VS dependency hierarchy and see how many things list it, and how awful it would be to remove them.. after I get the other stuff working. I may pass on the sandbox as well, if possible; it makes the security guy in me cringe something awful, but as they say, shipping is a feature..

great

Please make that happen !

Working on it! I've gotten over half of the projects to build and link, but some other stuff is adamantly refusing to work. I'm beginning to suspect I'll need to work from the other direction - rather than starting at the bottom and building all the dependencies, then combining them into browser components, and then eventually combining all the components into a complete piece of software, I may have to work from the top, removing components until the whole thing builds (at which point it will likely be useless, or all-but) and then seeing what I can add back in. I thought it would be faster to just assume everything can be made to work and only exclude something if it proved intractable, but at this point I've got a ton of very small components and almost no ability to combine them.
It would also help if VS was better at managing such truly immense tasks. For example, I have no simple graph of what all is and is not building, so I'm being forced to manually map that onto the VS dependency tree and see what is blocking a given component from building successfully, and how much is dependent upon it, one erroring project at a time (and there are a *lot* of erroring projects - my last attempt to build any substantial part of the system saw 50 of 400 projects fail).

GoodDayToDie said:
Working on it! I've gotten over half of the projects to build and link, but some other stuff is adamantly refusing to work. I'm beginning to suspect I'll need to work from the other direction - rather than starting at the bottom and building all the dependencies, then combining them into browser components, and then eventually combining all the components into a complete piece of software, I may have to work from the top, removing components until the whole thing builds (at which point it will likely be useless, or all-but) and then seeing what I can add back in. I thought it would be faster to just assume everything can be made to work and only exclude something if it proved intractable, but at this point I've got a ton of very small components and almost no ability to combine them.
It would also help if VS was better at managing such truly immense tasks. For example, I have no simple graph of what all is and is not building, so I'm being forced to manually map that onto the VS dependency tree and see what is blocking a given component from building successfully, and how much is dependent upon it, one erroring project at a time (and there are a *lot* of erroring projects - my last attempt to build any substantial part of the system saw 50 of 400 projects fail).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thinkt tht is a mutch better taktic and mutch less frustrading.
I would love to see just a minimal version of it. After that all the small componens can follow.
50 of 400 is pretty good i think. Better then i expected

Bear in mind that the entire thing is 650 projects. If 50 fail at that level, many of the higher-level ones (dependent upon the lower-level) will fail too. I'll see what I can do. I may or may not be able to get v8 actually working (without it, the JS speed will be very bad, think IE8 at best) and I may have to fall back to the legacy libjpeg (which will cut JPEG render speeds by at least a factor of 2). Skia (2D drawing library used by Chrome) has a bunch of assembly optimizations that I need to get it to use the Arm version of instead. There's a couple of total hacks with the library files I've had to pull, which may or may not result in a working final build. We'll see.

GoodDayToDie said:
Bear in mind that the entire thing is 650 projects. If 50 fail at that level, many of the higher-level ones (dependent upon the lower-level) will fail too. I'll see what I can do. I may or may not be able to get v8 actually working (without it, the JS speed will be very bad, think IE8 at best) and I may have to fall back to the legacy libjpeg (which will cut JPEG render speeds by at least a factor of 2). Skia (2D drawing library used by Chrome) has a bunch of assembly optimizations that I need to get it to use the Arm version of instead. There's a couple of total hacks with the library files I've had to pull, which may or may not result in a working final build. We'll see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the v8 engine ( used in nodejs ) has been ported to ARM :
I still can't link : htt p://ww w.it-wars.com/article305/compiler-node-js-pour-arm-v5
perhaps it will help you
Edit : oups, I just see that another great user of this forum made the port of nodejs to RT

Yep... but they did it without v8. That's not an encouraging result, but I feel like I'm so close...

Is there a GitHub repo so we can help or track the progress of the project ?

Sorry, not at present. There probably should be. The sheer size of the codebase is incredible (about 2.4GB) and having some way to share it practically would be good.
Also, I suspect this would go a lot faster if I don't have to repeat the work of others. I know that there's a working Webkit DLL out there, for example (though with several features, including the V8 JS engine, missing) and if I could get my hands on that it would drastically reduce the number of additional components I need to build. Currently I'm working on the sandbux, but expect that I will need to rip the whole thing out and basically have the browser run as though it was always passed the --no-sandbox parameter, at least for the first build. Too damn much assembly.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/google-chrome-native-client-arm-support/
This wouldn't have any impact on this project, would it?
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda-developers app, complete with annoying signatures.

It probably means that NaCl on Windows RT will be possible in the future. At present, I'm cutting it out of the build - too much x86-specific stuff there to port it over myself, and it owuldn't be able to run x86-compiled NaCl code anyhow.

You might have bit off more than you could chew. It'd better if you put your current progress under version control on some public site so that other people may be able to help you.
It's a big and complex project. You are taking a lot of time, and understandably so. But just open up to other people and you could get this done faster.

Yeah, this is probably true. My life also got unexpectedly *busy* in the last week; a couple weeks ago I had many times as much free time as I do now, and so porting has slowed down.
My upload speed would take ages (literally probably at least a day of solid activity; it's embarassingly slow) to push the full source anywhere, but I may make the effort anyhow. I'll have to post it somewhere for GPL compliance in any case...

You may upload only the diff files, they'll probably be smaller then the whole distribution.

Not to pour cold water on you however, IE10 is already faster than the latest Chrome build in Windows Phone, Windows 8.
I don't see the point of this.
I have personally jumped from IE8 > FF > Chrome and finally back to IE10 over the years depends on its usability, smoothness, speed, etc

Speed isn't the only reason to use a browser. I actually prefer IE myself, but there are some things that other browsers do better than it (in the case of Chrome, parts of HTML5, the syncing across Google services, etc.) Also, Chrome gets updated far more often than IE; IE9 was equal with Chrome on speed at its release, and was far behind by the time IE10 came out.
The reason for this project, though, is a mixture of interest in what it takes, and a desire to benefit the community. Microsoft has deeped that only software which they have blessed may run on the Windows RT desktop. I disagree, and have chosen (among several other things) to port a web browser because I feel that it's important for users to have choice.

LastBattle said:
Not to pour cold water on you however, IE10 is already faster than the latest Chrome build in Windows Phone, Windows 8.
I don't see the point of this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some websites do not get along with the trident rendering engine. Some webdevs are so "Oh f*** IE I don't care" and block access to features just because it is IE. I have experienced this first hand on IE10 on my surface where it tells me to come back when I have a decent browser, only to not have the choice to do that.
This really isn't the webdevs fault either, for years IE was the scum of the internet, only recently has IE caught up to the rest of the browsers (and in my opinion exceeded some) but the years of IE being bad have left a lot of disjointed webdevs who won't even consider giving the latest IE a chance.

Wayland server for Android

ABANDONED
Hi! Does anyone here use Linux desktop distributions in chroot environment on Android device?
I am developing wayland protocol server for Android devices. If anyone is interested in checking my project, latest version of apk is always available here:
ftp://ftp.drivehq.com/mogryph/sparkle/
Currently I am only focused on running Xwayland as client. Also apk supports audio output.
Simplest instruction:
1. Android 6 or newer required, busybox required, root required
2. Prepare linux distribution in directory, image or on partition. Make sure you have Xwayland installed in it. Make sure you specify which DE to run (or at least xterm) in ~/.xinitrc
3. Install and start sparkle.apk
4. Press "edit user.sh", uncomment (remove #) line starting with start_generic_container. Change rest of this line to match your device:
first arg - image or partition where distribution is installed. If distribution is installed in directory and mouting is not needed, leave this arg unchanged.
second arg - mount point or directory with distribution. If you use mounting (first arg), this arg can be left unchanged.
third arg - name of the user which will be used to start Xwayland and DE. Its better to specify non-root. Also this is the user who must have .xinitrc in his home dir (see step 2).
5. Save user.sh and click "Start".
6. Any problems and crashes will be reflected in the log.
If you want audio output:
1. Compile and install driver from pcm_sparkle.tar.gz in your distribtion
2. cp 1.asoundrc ~/.asoundrc
If you have blinking problem, change upload_mode from 1 to 2 in settings. If you have bad performance, setting no_damage to true may help, but in most cases no_damage=false is better. Fastest upload mode is 0 (if it works).
If you don't trust me and don't want to give sparkle root permissions (I perfectly understand this) you don't have to. Also you can do without busybox.
But in this case, you need to understand and do a lot of things. Check sparkle's user.sh to get idea about what needs to be done. Basically:
1. You need to make /data/data/com.sion.sparkle/files accessible from inside chroot container. You can use bind bound.
2. Make sure you have tmpfs mounted over /tmp in container.
3. You may need to change selinux context on /tmp to match sparkle's context or disable SELinux.
4. You need to create new directory in /tmp, symlink sparkle's wayland socket from /data/data/com.sion.sparkle/files/wayland-0 to this dir. And export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to point to this dir. Dir must be (ch)owned by user who will be running Xwayland and DE.
5. After all this, you can try to start Xwayland and your DE.

new version
New version
rgho.st/8Fbz64Rxj
Added x86 and x86_64 support. Actually it is rewritten almost from scratch but x86 support is the only thing others can notice...

Hello! This project is interesting. I tried you app and it works on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X(chromium and glmark from chrooted environment works very well)! Can you publish source code on Github, because it really interesting project?

Also I'm interested, please post it on github!

Did you put this up on github or move this thread? Looks very interesting.

1
Argh, sorry, I decided to abandon this project. You are free to delete thread. Also no copyleft-licensed components were used so I don't have to bother releasing sources.

Hentacler said:
Argh, sorry, I decided to abandon this project. You are free to delete thread. Also no copyleft-licensed components were used so I don't have to bother releasing sources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check your PM please!

1
Hello again.
For last two weeks I was rewriting it from scratch (yes. again... yes, third time).
Probably need another week to make it stable.
Currently I am not sure it runs on any device except my own 5-year old phone (LineageOS 14).
I will maintain last version here:
ftp://ftp.drivehq.com/mogryph/sparkle/
There is no English documentation, but you can see script "user.sh" to get idea about how to start xwayland. In most cases it should be enough to edit few lines in that script to make it work on another device. If you execute this script on your device with "install" argument, it is supposed to place itself into sparkle's directory and sparkle is supposed to run it ("start" function) automatically. Sparkle doesn't request root unless script does.
Here is video of sparkle working:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOSFYxCF7Q8
But it seems that KDE + video recording was too much for my old phone
Still, if you going to see video, don't close it until 2:00 where I turned of composition which caused lags.
Also on device everything looks much smoother than on video, even after 2:00.
When I watch fullscreen (1280x720) video on my device, sparkle + xwayland together add just 5% of CPU load (20% load of single core).
Thats it I guess... I tried to to discuss sparkle on 4pda.ru (russian forums), but got very bad reception. "xsdl is perfect, dont reinvent the wheel" they say. So I started to hate humanity and I decided to make sparkle personal project. Also this is last time I am solving reCAPTCHA to leave post on XDA.

Still alive
We are still alive. I've changed first post to reflect actual state. Now sparkle supports audio, auto-mouting containers and is lot more stable.
Yet there are still many things I want to improve in sparkle's core before adding new functions.
Also there are few demo videos on ftp.

Amazing!
Working great on my redmi 6 pro. Stock miui 9.9.3 rom. With linuxdeploy and sparkle from your ftp. No lag on visual and sound. My Linux distribution is alpinelinux arm64 arch.
Since first time I see your posting on 4pda. I'm interested in it. And finally it's on xda.
Thanks dev.
---------- Post added at 02:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:44 AM ----------
For anyone interested in the topic. Please follow the instructions in documentation from ftp. And Translate it to eng from rus.

This sounds amazing! Just curious, is it related to https://github.com/twaik/sparkle ?

I now have it working very well on my Samsung Tab S3 using Xwayland and a tiling window manager. Firefox runs amazingly well!
Is it meant to be used only with Xwayland or will it also work with native Wayland applications?
BTW, I think if you open sourced this project and promoted it a bit, it could become quite popular. It's basically the first way to run X11 GUI applications on Android devices at full speed. If you set up a donation link, you could also get compensated for your time and effort. I'll personally contribute $20 if it's open sourced, and I'm sure others will chip in as well.

robsmith11 said:
This sounds amazing! Just curious, is it related to https://github.com/twaik/sparkle ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for feedback. Nice to hear that someone managed to start this thing
Twaik's repository is clone of my very very old version of sparkle. I made that version years ago when I was just starting to learn linux and C++. Sparkle was rewritten from scratch two or three times since that version. And (I believe) current version is much better.
Regarding making it open source... Few months ago I had to find real job. Can't spend much time on personal projects any more. But I have my own strange programming style and my own vision of what sparkle should be. Not sure I want others to paint on my picture. It's probably all because of Twaik! I hate how he used old open source version of sparkle. He did terrible things to it, outraging all my beliefs Sorry!
P.S.: Yesterday I've uploaded another apk to my ftp. The file is called "sparkle-testing.apk". This version is much newer and has many fixes. But I've also changed to many things since tested version including some fundamental changes. No guarantee it will run at all on other devices. Interest is mega low and I get no test reports at all.

Hi Hentacler, I've just found your project - it looks really promising. Unfortunately, the only link currently working on this thread is to github. Is this project still live?
I have a samsung galaxy note 10+, and am using it as a laptop replacement. In addition to the android apps using Samsung Dex (Samsung's desktop solution), I have several linux distributions installed inside a chroot using userLand - so far, its working great. I'd be keen to give you project a try if it's still live, and am happy to help out with testing from my device.
Re open source - while I like your project, I'm not super interested in investing time into something that's not open sourced - I appreciate your concerns about wanting to maintain the direction, but having transparent development is pretty important to me. Is Twaik's fork of your project a better place to go?
Cheers.

tillum said:
Hi Hentacler, I've just found your project - it looks really promising. Unfortunately, the only link currently working on this thread is to github. Is this project still live?
I have a samsung galaxy note 10+, and am using it as a laptop replacement. In addition to the android apps using Samsung Dex (Samsung's desktop solution), I have several linux distributions installed inside a chroot using userLand - so far, its working great. I'd be keen to give you project a try if it's still live, and am happy to help out with testing from my device.
Re open source - while I like your project, I'm not super interested in investing time into something that's not open sourced - I appreciate your concerns about wanting to maintain the direction, but having transparent development is pretty important to me. Is Twaik's fork of your project a better place to go?
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ftp://ftp.drivehq.com/mogryph/sparkle/
Link to FTP should work and there you can get two versions:
sparkle.apk - old version, but confirmed to work by 3-4 people.
sparkle-testing.apk - latest version, but only briefly tested by me.
I don't ask anyone to invest anything... Sparkle doesn't request root access or any other dangerous permissions (unless you enable automatic container mounting and starting) so it's safe to try for anyone who wants.
Btw, somewhere between these two versions I've replaced BASH container initialization script with LUA version. That was probably a bad idea. LUA script is harder to start directly as root and hacks I used may not work (currently may even cause application freeze if root access is denied). Going to revert to BASH probably. But this only touches people who want sparkle to mount container and launch everything automatically on single button press.
p.s.: Why I need to solve captcha every time I post something?

Thanks for the new release! I've updated and everything seems to be working without any changes on my Samsung Tab S3 with chroot and Arch Arm Linux.
Your changes also solved the flickering for me! The old version would flicker the screen whenever my keyboard's trackpoint activated, but it's not flickering at all any more. Performance seems to be about the same.
I think this could be quite popular, but not many people know about it. Perhaps a post on Hacker News or Reddit would raise awareness.
I understand your position on open source and maintaining control. One idea if you haven't already considered it is releasing the code with a restrictive license that forbids any forks. But either way, I'm enjoying being to properly use X11 on my tablet.
BTW, have you tried any native Wayland compositors? I don't really understand the Wayland ecosystem that well. I gave Sway a brief try, but it didn't seem to work. I've only been using XWayland.

@Hentacler Thanks for your reply! Very keen to get this working, but having a few issues. I'm unsure how to configure the user.lua file - I'm using your latest apk.
I have a non-rooted device, and am running archlinux under termux. Works fine with xsdl. I have installed xorg-server-wayland for X11. I'd appreciate any advice you have.
@robsmith11 Are you able to share how you got this working on Arch? Thanks!!!!

tillum said:
@Hentacler Thanks for your reply! Very keen to get this working, but having a few issues. I'm unsure how to configure the user.lua file - I'm using your latest apk.
I have a non-rooted device, and am running archlinux under termux. Works fine with xsdl. I have installed xorg-server-wayland for X11. I'd appreciate any advice you have.
@robsmith11 Are you able to share how you got this working on Arch? Thanks!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not sure it is possible to use sparkle without root...
Sparkle makes it's directory accessible for everyone (chmod 777). Before Android 8 or 9 this was enough and xwayland from termux was able to connect to sparkle. Here is how people used to start it:
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/data/data/com.sion.sparkle/files
Xwayland
But newer versions of Android brought more restrictions and termux can no longer connect to sparkle. These new restrictions are implemented using SELinux if you know what it is. Applications now have different security contexts.
But that is not all. Newest versions of android brought even more terrible meaningless restrictions effectively "killing" applications like termux and many others.
In short, from now one applications are not allowed to execute code (binary) that comes from "untrusted" sources. Termux used to download a lot of such code from it's own repositories. And now it can't. We can't even unpack binaries from assets.
So I can only help with rooted devices.
P.S. Please forgive me, but I am leaving this website. Making people solve recaptcha every time they want to post something is unacceptable level of contempt.
My mail: [email protected]

Thanks for that, will have a play. I could always just root my device. Weird about recaptcha, not having this issue. Currently through termux I have access to the whole sdcard, and am able to download packages (and distros) in it - will have a play and see what else is possible.

@tillum
I basically just followed the instructions on the first post for using Sparkle without busybox. I didn't need to modify the Lua scripts.
I'm guessing SELinux may be a problem without root. I'll try setting it up without root when I have a chance later.