Using hugo on Termux

It may seem odd to use a phone for managing a web site but I find it sometimes useful and definitely cool to have the option.

Previously I only performed small changes such as fixing a typo which didn’t require a local test. Currently I try to understand Hugo better and thought to run it locally on the phone.

Much to my surprise I only received this error message

Error: command error: failed to load modules: failed to download modules: failed to execute 'go [mod download -modcacherw]': failed to execute binary "go" with args [mod download -modcacherw]: go: RLock go.mod: function not implemented

There is an issue for this in the Golang repository. It seems Termux can’t lock when it accesses the Android filesystem and that is where I had stored the source files for the blog.

There is an solution for this: I keep my blog sources in git and hence just cloned the repo into the Termux file system directly. Using git on Android with Termux is anyway one of my preferred ways of working with Git on Android.

Now hugo works as expected and I can run a local development version of Hugo on my phone and tablet which is convenient.