More Scheme Dev on Android, Now With Git Support

Continuing on my Scheme on Android kick, here's a solution to the most recent Programming Praxis problem. It's actually quite an interesting challenge:

It is generally accepted wisdom that people should use different passwords for each of their online accounts. Unfortunately, few people do that because of the difficulty of remembering so many passwords.

Manuel Blum — he’s the guy in the middle of the Blum Blum Shub sandwich — suggests an algorithm that hashes a web site name into a password. Further, his algorithm is cryptographically secure, so no one else can determine your password, and can be worked mentally, without a computer or even pencil and paper.

Read more about the algorithm here. I don't have the mental muscle to execute the hash in my head, but it was a terrific little coding challenge.

I used the same setup as last time: Gambit Scheme + DroidEdit + Perixx 805L Keyboard. For the most part, I found myself writing and executing Scheme with little regard for the fact that I was working on a cell phone. That, of course, is what I'm after.

Two improvements I've made in the setup:

First, I've defined a procedure named lex, which I can invoke to reload the source file I'm working on:

This combined with a couple of keyboard shortcuts to switch between Gambit and DroidEdit means that I can modify, reload and execute new code with relative ease. Having the source code live in ex1.scm means that the entire solution to the problem will be in one file. Which for the purposes of developing solutions to these brain teasers is ideal.

Second, I've setup git in Terminal IDE. So now, when I'm finished developing a solution, I can archive it. DroidEdit has built in support for Git, but I prefer a command line interface to version control.

Setting up Terminal IDE took just a bit of wrangling. Here's what I did:

• Made sure the appropriate public key was in Github.
• On a Linux machine that had the dropbear ssh tools installed, I converted my private key to be in the dropbear format:

  mkdir ~/tmp/working
  cp ~/.ssh/id_dsa ~/tmp/working
  cd ~/tmp/working
  ssh-keygen -p -f id_dsa # strip the encryption from the openssh key
  dropbearconvert openssh dropbear id_dsa id_dsa.db
  # Copy id_dsa.db to the Galaxy S5
  rm -rf ~/tmp/working
  

• Checked the key on my phone by running the following within Terminal IDE:

  ssh -i id_dsa.db git@github.com
  

• Within Terminal IDE, I created a wrapper script named gitssh to launch ssh properly:

  #!/data/data/com.spartacusrex.spartacuside/files/system/bin/bash
  ssh -i $HOME/id_dsa.db $*
  

• Still within Terminal IDE, I set the GIT_SSH variable to the above script:

  setenv GIT_SSH=gitssh
  

• I was then able to launch git commands as usual:

   git clone ssh://git@github.com/benjisimon/code
   ...
  

Happy on the go hacking!