Mosh for Android

⚠️ Not affiliated with the Moshi app. This repository is not the library used by Moshi. It is an experimental Android build of upstream mosh (GPLv3). After noticing that GPLv3 is incompatible with shipping a closed-source commercial app, the Moshi app's mobile-shell layer was rewritten from scratch in Rust and lives in a separate, private codebase. This repo is kept public for reference only.

Pre-built static libraries for mosh (mobile shell) and all its dependencies, ready for Android NDK integration.

Download

📦 Download from GitHub Releases

• mosh-android-libs-v1.0.0.tar.gz - For Linux/macOS
• mosh-android-libs-v1.0.0.zip - For Windows

Supported Architectures

Architecture	Description
arm64-v8a	64-bit ARM (most modern Android devices)
armeabi-v7a	32-bit ARM (older devices)
x86_64	64-bit x86 (emulators, some tablets)

Libraries Included

Mosh (v1.4.0)

• libmoshcrypto.a - Cryptographic functions (OCB mode)
• libmoshnetwork.a - UDP transport layer
• libmoshprotos.a - Protocol buffer definitions
• libmoshstatesync.a - State synchronization protocol
• libmoshterminal.a - Terminal emulation
• libmoshutil.a - Utility functions

Dependencies

• OpenSSL 3.2.1 - libssl.a, libcrypto.a
• Protocol Buffers 33.3 - libprotobuf.a + abseil-cpp libraries
• ncurses 6.4 - libncursesw.a

Directory Structure

mosh-android/
├── android-libs/           # Packaged libraries ready for use
│   ├── include/            # Header files
│   ├── static/             # Static libraries per architecture
│   │   ├── arm64-v8a/
│   │   ├── armeabi-v7a/
│   │   └── x86_64/
│   └── README.md           # CMake integration guide
├── build-*.sh              # Build scripts (for rebuilding)
└── README.md               # This file

Usage

CMake Integration

set(MOSH_LIBS_DIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/path/to/android-libs)

include_directories(${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/include)

target_link_libraries(your_target
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshnetwork.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshstatesync.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshterminal.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshcrypto.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshutil.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libmoshprotos.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libprotobuf.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libssl.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libcrypto.a
    ${MOSH_LIBS_DIR}/static/${ANDROID_ABI}/libncursesw.a
    log
    z
)

React Native / Expo

For React Native integration, you'll need to create a native module that wraps the mosh libraries. See the iOS implementation in MoshClient for reference.

Building from Source

If you need to rebuild the libraries:

# Prerequisites
brew install android-ndk autoconf automake protobuf

# Build everything
./build-openssl.sh
./build-protobuf-android.sh
./build-ncurses-arm.sh
./build-ncurses-x86_64.sh
./build-mosh.sh
./package-android.sh

Build Requirements

• macOS with Homebrew
• Android NDK r29+
• autoconf, automake
• protoc (matching version for cross-compile)

Patches Applied

The following patches were applied during the build:

1. locale_utils.cc - Added Android fallback for nl_langinfo() since Android's Bionic libc doesn't support it. Returns UTF-8 by default on Android.

License

• Mosh is licensed under GPLv3
• OpenSSL is dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and OpenSSL License
• Protocol Buffers is licensed under BSD-3-Clause
• ncurses is licensed under MIT

Related Projects

• mosh - Original mosh project
• Termux - Reference for Android builds