// the find
koush/Superuser
koush/Superuser is the Android su management app that became the reference implementation for rooted device access control — the thing that shows the permission prompt when an app requests root. It's aimed at Android ROM developers and power users who want an open, auditable gate between apps and root, not a black box.
The C su binary is small and auditable, which matters here because this code runs setuid root — you can actually read the daemon.c and pts.c and understand what's happening. AOSP and CyanogenMod build system integration is first-class, with a local_manifest.xml and embedding path for Settings, so ROM devs can drop it in without patching the build. Per-app policy with SQLite logging is solid: grant/deny/ask per UID with a proper daemon handling concurrent requests. Multiuser (Android 4.2+) support was ahead of most alternatives at the time.
Dead since 2023, last meaningful development probably closer to 2014 — this predates the Magisk era entirely and has no awareness of modern root approaches (Zygisk, systemless root, overlay filesystems). The build toolchain is Eclipse + Ant + NDK r9b, which is a museum piece; getting this to compile today requires hunting down legacy SDK versions. No test suite anywhere in the repo. The translation workflow pointing to CyanogenMod's Gerrit instance is a 404 waiting to happen — CyanogenMod shut down in 2016.