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    ____  _________  _________  ____/ /_
   / __ \/ ___/ __ \/ ___/ __ \/ __ / __/
  / /_/ / /  / /_/ / /  / /_/ / /_/ / /_
 / .___/_/   \____/_/   \____/\__,_/\__/
/_/

Rootless Linux runtime for Android.

Run full glibc Linux userspace — Node.js, Python, Git, Chromium — inside Android apps. No root required.

A drop-in replacement for proot with zero ptrace overhead.

📢 Notice

Similar LD_PRELOAD-based tools have started appearing recently — some within days of discovering this project. That was a wake-up call.

I'm now building proroom, a standalone Android app with proroot at its core. One app, everything integrated — no Termux-X11, no VNC, no extra setup.

Binary releases here continue for existing users. Development focus has shifted to proroom, so expect slower updates in the meantime.

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Installation

Download all 5 .so files from Releases and place them in jniLibs/arm64-v8a/.

Requirements

• Android 8.0+ (API 26)
• arm64-v8a
• Ubuntu arm64 rootfs with glibc

Usage

libproroot.so -r <rootfs> -0 --link2symlink -w /root /bin/sh -c 'node server.js'

The launcher auto-discovers libproroot-runtime.so, libproroot-linker.so, libproroot-bridge.so, and libproroot-stub-loader.so from its own directory (/proc/self/exe dirname). Drop all five .so files in the same folder and call the launcher directly — no LD_* or PROROOT_*_PATH exports required.

CLI options

Option	Description
-r <rootfs>	Guest root directory (required)
-w <dir>	Working directory inside the guest
-b <host> / -b <host>:<guest>	Bind-mount a host path into the guest
-0	Fake uid=0 / gid=0 (proot-compatible fakeroot)
--link2symlink	Emulate hardlinks via anchor + symlink groups (legacy proroot compat)
--static-loader / --no-static-loader	Force-enable or disable static-loader exec routing. Default is adaptive: enabled when libproroot-stub-loader.so is available.

Android app-process invocation:

PROROOT_TMP_DIR=/data/user/0/<package>/files \
libproroot.so \
  -r /data/user/0/<package>/files/rootfs \
  -0 \
  --link2symlink \
  -w /root \
  /bin/sh -c '<command>'

Environment variables

Variable	Description
PROROOT_VERBOSE=1	Debug logging
PROROOT_GUEST_EXE	Guest path for /proc/self/exe emulation
PROROOT_TMP_DIR	Writable directory for runtime config files (use app filesDir in Android app processes)
PROROOT_STUB_LOADER	Optional absolute path override for libproroot-stub-loader.so
PROROOT_LOG_APPEND	Optional diagnostic log file path used by launcher/runtime/stub traces

Tested with

• Node.js 22.22.2 + npm 10.9.7
• Python 3.12.3
• Git 2.43.0
• Chromium / Playwright
• XFCE 4 + TigerVNC
• curl, OpenSSL 3.0

Validated on Samsung Galaxy Flip (Android 16) and Lenovo Tab (Android 15).

Source code

The source is not public yet because I'm still stabilizing the implementation and don't want to publish something half-broken.

For now I'm sharing binaries for testing and feedback while I validate compatibility across real workloads.

License

Proprietary. Free to use in your projects. Redistribution of modified binaries is not permitted.