Flow Console for iOS

Flow Console is a professional, desktop-grade terminal for iOS that leverages the support of Mosh and SSH. Providing stable connections, lightning-fast speeds, and full configurations for your all-day-long development workflow.

Flow Console was built as a professional grade product from the onset, grounded on these three concepts:

• Fast rendering: dmesg in your Unix server should be instantaneous. We use Chromium's HTerm to ensure that rendering is perfect and fast, even with special, tricky encodings.
• Always on: Mosh transcends SSH's variability. Mosh overcomes the unstable and intermittent connectivity that we all associate with mobile connections. You can seamlessly jump from home, to the train, and then the office thanks to Mosh.
• Fully configurable: Flow Console embraces Bluetooth-coupled keyboards with gusto. Configure Caps as Esc on Vim, or Caps as Ctrl on Emacs. Add your own custom themes and fonts to Flow Console.

Features

• Command-focused interface: Jump right into a friendly shell with a clear, straightforward interface
• Full screen terminal: No menus, just your terminal
• Gesture controls: Swipe to move between connections, slide down to close them, and pinch to zoom
• Configuration management: Add your own Hosts and RSA Encryption keys
• SplitView support: For necessary searches and chats with coworkers

Built-in Shell Utilities

Flow Console includes a comprehensive set of shell utilities:

File Operations:

• cd, setenv, ls, touch, cp, rm, ln, mv, mkdir, rmdir
• df, du, chksum, chmod, chflags, chgrp, stat, readlink
• compress, uncompress, gzip, gunzip

System Information:

• pwd, env, printenv, date, uname, id, groups, whoami, uptime

Text Processing:

• cat, grep, wc

Network & File Transfer:

• curl (includes http, https, scp, sftp...), scp, sftp
• tar

Scripting:

• Python and Lua scripting support
• Redirection support (">", "<", "&>")

All commands are provided by the ios_system.framework. For more information about extending commands, see: https://github.com/holzschu/ios_system.

File Transfer Examples

# Using curl with key management
curl scp://host.name.edu/filename -o filename --key $SHARED/id_rsa --pass MyPassword 

# Using scp and sftp commands
scp user@host.name.edu:filename . 
sftp localFilename user@host.name.edu:~/ 

Environment Variables

Due to iOS sandbox restrictions, you can only write in ~/Documents/, ~/Library/ and ~/tmp. Flow Console sets up the following environment variables:

PATH = $PATH:~/Library/bin:~/Documents/bin
PYTHONHOME = $HOME/Library/
SSH_HOME = $HOME/Documents/
CURL_HOME = $HOME/Documents/
HGRCPATH = $HOME/Documents/.hgrc/
SSL_CERT_FILE = $HOME/Documents/cacert.pem

Building Flow Console

Prerequisites

1. Check that xcode-select -p points to Xcode.app (/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer)

Build Steps

1. Clone and setup the repository:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/your-username/flow-console.git && \
    cd flow-console && ./get_frameworks.sh && ./get_resources.sh && \
    rm -rf "Flow Console.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcshareddata/"

2. Configure developer settings:

cp template_setup.xcconfig developer_setup.xcconfig

Edit developer_setup.xcconfig to set your Apple Developer ID and other settings.

3. Open Flow Console.xcodeproj in Xcode

4. Optional: If building without iCloud, Push Notifications, or Keychain sharing, disable these capabilities in the project settings.

5. Connect your iOS device and select it in Product → Destination

6. Build and run the project

Device Testing

To build for a connected iPad Pro 11-inch:

xcodebuild -project "Flow Console.xcodeproj" \
  -scheme "Flow Console" \
  -destination "platform=iOS,name=iPad Pro (11-inch)" \
  clean build

Contributing

Flow Console is free and open source software. We welcome contributions!

• Bug Reports: Please report bugs here on GitHub
• Feature Requests: Open an issue to discuss new features
• Pull Requests: Contributions are welcome following our coding standards

License

Flow Console is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Flow Console is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Flow Console. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Acknowledgments

Flow Console is a fork of the open source Blink Shell project. We are grateful to the original Blink Shell developers and contributors for creating an excellent terminal application that serves as the foundation for Flow Console.

Original Project: https://github.com/blinksh/blink
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Copyright: Original Blink Shell code is Copyright (c) 2016-2024 by the Blink Shell contributors

Flow Console maintains the same GPL v3.0 license and builds upon the solid architectural foundation provided by the Blink Shell project. All original copyright notices and attributions are preserved in the source code.