Building tea CLI for Termux
Overview
This documents the process of building the tea CLI (official Gitea CLI tool) as a Termux package for aarch64 Android devices.
Prerequisites
- Docker installed with user in docker group
- termux-packages repository cloned
- Android NDK is handled automatically by the Docker builder image
Phase 1 -- Local Build
1. Clone termux-packages
git clone https://github.com/termux/termux-packages
2. Create package directory and build.sh
File: packages/tea/build.sh
Key fields:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| TERMUX_PKG_VERSION | 0.14.0 |
| TERMUX_PKG_SRCURL | https://gitea.com/gitea/tea/archive/refs/tags/v${TERMUX_PKG_VERSION}.tar.gz |
| TERMUX_PKG_SHA256 | f509de217ac0e57491ffdab2750516e8c505780881529ee703b9d0c86cc652a3 |
| TERMUX_PKG_LICENSE | MIT |
| TERMUX_PKG_BUILD_DEPENDS | golang |
| TERMUX_PKG_BUILD_IN_SRC | true |
Critical notes:
- Do NOT set TERMUX_PKG_DEPENDS= (empty value is parsed as a dependency on an empty string -- caused the first build failure)
- Use termux_setup_golang in termux_step_pre_configure()
- Build with CGO_ENABLED=0 for pure Go compilation
3. Build via Docker
cd termux-packages
bash scripts/run-docker.sh
# Inside container:
./build-package.sh -f -I tea
The -f flag forces rebuild, -I downloads dependencies from Termux repos instead of building them locally.
4. Result
- Output: output/tea_0.14.0_aarch64.deb (6.2MB)
- Install on device: pkg install ./output/tea_0.14.0_aarch64.deb
Phase 2 -- Contribute Upstream
Submitting to termux-packages
- Fork https://github.com/termux/termux-packages
- Add packages/tea/build.sh to your fork
- Create PR with commit message: addpkg(main/tea): add tea CLI for Gitea servers
Packaging Policy Compliance
- MIT licensed
- Active project (233+ stars on Gitea)
- Pure Go (no CGO issues, no native deps)
- Not installable via language-specific package manager
- Package size under 100MB
Known Issues Encountered
- Empty TERMUX_PKG_DEPENDS -- Setting TERMUX_PKG_DEPENDS= causes parse error: "depends on non-existing package". Fix: omit the line entirely.
- NDK not installed -- Local build fails without Android NDK. Fix: use Docker builder image instead.
- SSH sudo -- run-docker.sh requires TERMUX_DOCKER_USE_SUDO=1 unless user has sorted sudo permissions.
Build Time
Approximately 5-15 minutes for first build (downloading Go toolchain, fetching all Go module dependencies, cross-compilation). Subsequent builds are faster due to caching.