Why?

Because using the built-in mksh and editing text using pipes and redirects like a caveman is insanity!

Luckily, a kind stranger has already saved us the headache of cross-compiling :)

https://github.com/bnsmb/binaries-for-Android

Setup Instructions

Note

All commands displayed here are run inside ADB shell.

1. cd to the special shell-owned path. This will be our $HOME¹

   cd /data/local/tmp

2. Get the bash and vim binaries from binaries-for-Android

   binaries="https://github.com/bnsmb/binaries-for-Android/raw/refs/heads/main/binaries"
   curl -LO $binaries/bash
   curl -L -o vim $binaries/vim-9.2  # select whichever version is available

3. Make them executable and move to bin/

   chmod +x bash vim
   mkdir bin
   mv bash vim -t bin/

4. Get .bashrc and .vimrc from this repo

   dots="https://github.com/SuggonM/dotfiles/raw/refs/heads/adb-shell"
   curl -LO $dots/.bashrc
   curl -LO $dots/.vimrc
   curl -LO $dots/_bash
   chmod +x _bash

5. Get the Vim runtime

   curl -LO https://codeload.github.com/vim/vim/zip/refs/heads/master
   unzip master 'vim-master/runtime/*'
   mkdir -p sysroot/usr/share/vim
   mv vim-master/runtime sysroot/usr/share/vim
   rm -r master vim-master

6. Run the bash wrapper to enter bash

   /data/local/tmp/_bash

Footnotes

1. Unlike the name tmp suggests, it's persistent. ↩