Was curious about getting VSCode running on my Samsung Note 9. I have a wireless bluetooth keyboard, so why not.

The process was pretty simple in the end, just needed to figure out a few parts first.

Install steps

Came down to effectively 2 commands (3 if manually checking the installed node version like I am here):

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$ pkg install -y yarn nodejs python git binutils
$ node -v
v17.4.0
$ FORCE_NODE_VERSION=17.4.0 yarn global add code-server --ignore-engines

The --ignore-engines flag may not have been needed in the end, I’m still a little unclear as to exactly what all it does.

Either way here’s some shots of the install progress on my phone, pkg and yarn installs together probably took about 10-15 minutes, perhaps less:

Once installed it’s time to fire up the VSCode server:

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$ code-server &

It will start and then notify you about a config.yaml file that you’ll need to open for a password when connecting to the server:

Now opening a browser and navigating to the supplied uri (localhost on 8080 in this case):

At this point crack open that config file and snag the password:

Logging in should show the good old welcome screen:

Hello world in python:

Links

Some of the links visited during this, solution largely ended up being a combination of several of these:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/qs718m/vs_code_run_vs_code_on_termuxdesktop/
• https://dev.to/codeledger/how-to-get-visual-studio-code-to-run-in-termux-on-android-405j
• https://www.codewithharry.com/blogpost/install-vs-code-in-android
• https://gist.github.com/ppoffice/b9e88c9fd1daf882bc0e7f31221dda01
• https://github.com/coder/code-server/issues/4422
• https://github.com/coder/code-server/discussions/4748
• https://coder.com/docs/code-server/latest/termux#install
• https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/i6fgpp/how_to_install_multiple_node_versions/
  • This one lead to quite a while spent on figuring out NVM before falling back to the method that actually worked.