Let's say that I wanted to get into android rom development, what would be a good place to start to learn. I've downloaded several e-books about android development, but they all pertain to writing applications for android OS, not really getting into modding the OS itself. I suspect I'd need to learn about linux then translate that knowledge to android?
Anybody have any good places to start or good reference materials?
It appears that none of the cyanogenmod team is even going to do anything with the Captivate, they're all working on I9000 and Vibrant, totally ignoring the Captivate. So, I thought I'd get in there and try and learn.
Building Android from source - their own site is the best for instructions on how to build android: http://source.android.com/
Building Captivate requires downloading the sources, building the kernel using the build_kernel.sh after you've fixed the toolchain paths. Or you can just use the usual linux kernel building method that the script actually does underneath.
Then you need to build eclair (or froyo). Samsung has opensourced most of the code but not all so you need to figure out how to merge vanilla eclair source into Samsung's tree, and build it. There is a readme in the source from Samsung about what to change in the build files.
You're going to be doing a lot of googling . . . I haven't figured out all the details of the Samsung eclair build so you're on your own there. Maybe others can chime in.
-Atin
atinm said:
Building Android from source - their own site is the best for instructions on how to build android: http://source.android.com/
Building Captivate requires downloading the sources, building the kernel using the build_kernel.sh after you've fixed the toolchain paths. Or you can just use the usual linux kernel building method that the script actually does underneath.
Then you need to build eclair (or froyo). Samsung has opensourced most of the code but not all so you need to figure out how to merge vanilla eclair source into Samsung's tree, and build it. There is a readme in the source from Samsung about what to change in the build files.
You're going to be doing a lot of googling . . . I haven't figured out all the details of the Samsung eclair build so you're on your own there. Maybe others can chime in.
-Atin
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Thanks. Thats what I'm talking about, a lot of what you said seems Greek to me. I'd like to learn how to do all that. I guess, just read a lot from the google source website?
My advice would be to first learn how to go muck in the linux kernel and the Android sources in general. The Captivate code has been hacked some by Samsung so it doesn't quite follow all the rules about where files are supposed to go (there is no vendor tree for example) but at least it is a start. The google source site is the best for instructions on how to do vanilla stuff that's not hardware specific. Google around for more specific instructions related to the particular problem you are trying to solve after that.
Building working stuff at this level isn't easy. Unless you are somewhat experienced or willing to spend a lot of time learning and making mistakes, I'd say leave this to people who have some experience at this level and come back to it when building for the Captivate is well understood and the knowledge has been distributed enough so lots of people can help you when you have specific questions (no one likes answering general "how to" stuff on a device specific thread).
-Atin
Hey Guys,
I'm a developer for a living, and I'm interested in possibly working on a custom rom for my captivate. I was doing some research on how to get started, but the stuff I found was for HTC phones and involved using a starter that only works for HTC stuff.
Where can I go to find information on doing this? I'm largely interested in trying to port gingerbread, but my understanding was that until we have the full source this wasn't really possible (at least for something actually useable on a daily basis). I see supercurio is working on gingerbread, so information specific to this would be really helpful.
Thanks guys, and sorry if this should have been put in the QA section, I figured it was related to development, and could possibly be a sticky if it leads to useful info.
Pretty broad question. First requirement, is obviously...learn java.
I'm not sure if there's any specific "HOW-TO CODE YOUR OWN CAPTIVATE ROM" threads anywhere; there's general information available on http://developer.android.com , but modifying ROM's depends on the device it was written for.
As far as porting gingerbread, it will be very difficult without source and will definitely require quite a bit of kernel work. For information specific on this, supercurio would be the one to ask. Of course, the IRC's are also a great place to get information.
By the way, welcome to XDA! And I commend your motivation to develop stuff for the community here.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=869614
Doc over in the I9000 forums has the above thread started. I look there.
geokhentix said:
Pretty broad question. First requirement, is obviously...learn java.
I'm not sure if there's any specific "HOW-TO CODE YOUR OWN CAPTIVATE ROM" threads anywhere; there's general information available on http://developer.android.com , but modifying ROM's depends on the device it was written for.
As far as porting gingerbread, it will be very difficult without source and will definitely require quite a bit of kernel work. For information specific on this, supercurio would be the one to ask. Of course, the IRC's are also a great place to get information.
By the way, welcome to XDA! And I commend your motivation to develop stuff for the community here.
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Click to collapse
Again, I am a developer for a living. I know Java, I'm not looking for coding tutorials. I'm looking for information specifically regarding the captivate.
As far as gingerbread, it sounds like what you are saying is that what people like supercurio are working on is not really gingerbread? More of a Frankenstein created with the sdk, mashing together 2.2 kernels and what has been released for 2.3?
lbbo2002 said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=869614
Doc over in the I9000 forums has the above thread started. I look there.
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Looking at that thread, it appears the roms being made are just edited versions of already compiled roms? Is samsung not required to post the full source of their roms?
I'm assuming the issue with starting with the original android source, is that we wouldn't have drivers for half of the hardware in the phone. Is the only choice then to load the already compiled drivers from the samsung builds into the rom?
epoplive said:
Again, I am a developer for a living. I know Java, I'm not looking for coding tutorials. I'm looking for information specifically regarding the captivate.
As far as gingerbread, it sounds like what you are saying is that what people like supercurio are working on is not really gingerbread? More of a Frankenstein created with the sdk, mashing together 2.2 kernels and what has been released for 2.3?
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Click to collapse
There are different levels of making ROMs IMO.
You can combine work from others and make your own ROM. This requires no coding experience. For instance, I took JH7_OTA, dropped in Atinms Voodoo 3 kernel, removed bloatware, added my own custom framework (icons), etc., signed it and flashed it.
Then there is the whole Kernel side of things that requires an entire development environment (Linux) and C/C++ programming skills. I'm trying to get to this point. You can start by downloading the source and building it in your own environment familiarizing yourself with the codebase.
Indeed. Packing a ROM and making the contents of the ROM are two different sides of the spectrum. Even some minor framework modifications can be performed by the most tech-inept, as long as they have a good resource to work off of.
epoplive said:
Again, I am a developer for a living. I know Java, I'm not looking for coding tutorials. I'm looking for information specifically regarding the captivate.
As far as gingerbread, it sounds like what you are saying is that what people like supercurio are working on is not really gingerbread? More of a Frankenstein created with the sdk, mashing together 2.2 kernels and what has been released for 2.3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was only prodding fun when I mentioned learning Java, just to break the ice. All I'm saying is trial and error is the best way to learn Android if you're already a decent programmer. Without knowing what the source code looked like before Samsung owned it, we don't really have a base environment to work off of, which means we are modifying work that was already modified from stock; which is why it will be pretty hard to find a lot of definitive coding information about the Captivate.
Supercurio isn't making a frankenstein 2.2-2.3 hybrid. The kernel is where all of the information about your hardware resides. Supercurio needs to take the Gingerbread kernel from the Nexus S, and modify it to run with our hardware. You can't run a 2.3 ROM without a 2.3 kernel; so we CAN'T use a 2.2 kernel to run full gingerbread; and since a 2.3 kernel doesn't exist for the Captivate, he is using the Nexus s's kernel as a base, or as a reference to merge the differences between the two, creating a kernel that will support the Nexus S ROM on a phone that isn't the Nexus S.
epoplive said:
Looking at that thread, it appears the roms being made are just edited versions of already compiled roms? Is samsung not required to post the full source of their roms?
I'm assuming the issue with starting with the original android source, is that we wouldn't have drivers for half of the hardware in the phone. Is the only choice then to load the already compiled drivers from the samsung builds into the rom?
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Click to collapse
Correct. We don't have the source code for Froyo yet for the Captivate(or an OTA for that matter ), a lot of ROM's being made are based off of the SGS I9000 2.2 source, and because we have that source, we have a pretty much fully functional "captivated" i9000 kernel.
geokhentix said:
Indeed. Packing a ROM and making the contents of the ROM are two different sides of the spectrum. Even some minor framework modifications can be performed by the most tech-inept, as long as they have a good resource to work off of.
I was only prodding fun when I mentioned learning Java, just to break the ice. All I'm saying is trial and error is the best way to learn Android if you're already a decent programmer. Without knowing what the source code looked like before Samsung owned it, we don't really have a base environment to work off of, which means we are modifying work that was already modified from stock; which is why it will be pretty hard to find a lot of definitive coding information about the Captivate.
Supercurio isn't making a frankenstein 2.2-2.3 hybrid. The kernel is where all of the information about your hardware resides. Supercurio needs to take the Gingerbread kernel from the Nexus S, and modify it to run with our hardware. You can't run a 2.3 ROM without a 2.3 kernel; so we CAN'T use a 2.2 kernel to run full gingerbread; and since a 2.3 kernel doesn't exist for the Captivate, he is using the Nexus s's kernel as a base, or as a reference to merge the differences between the two, creating a kernel that will support the Nexus S ROM on a phone that isn't the Nexus S.
Correct. We don't have the source code for Froyo yet for the Captivate(or an OTA for that matter ), a lot of ROM's being made are based off of the SGS I9000 2.2 source, and because we have that source, we have a pretty much fully functional "captivated" i9000 kernel.
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Click to collapse
Ah, thanks, that's pretty much the information I was looking for.
Hi,
I'm trying to build cyanogenmod 6 (froyo) from sources on github for G1.
Sidenote. The reason I'm trying to do this is i'd like to modify kernel parameters. I'm trying to make the phone talk to external device using built in serial port. I can do it with my current CM6, but it looks like serial debugger engages and starts responding to the device and also steals some of the data being sent to phone.
To build I used instruction posted at cyanogen wiki "HTC Dream & Magic: Compile CyanogenMod (OS X)" which covers gingerbread but checked out froyo-stable branch at first. I know that gingerbread version stopped supporting G1 at some point last year.
Without much success even after fixing manifest to point to updated repo urls from kernel.org to googles repo etc. The problem is that apache-http seems incompatible with old sources and it is referenced by head.
I also tried froyo branch, but it doesn't build as well because something seem to be broken for dream_sapphire, and it is not present in the devices anymore.
I've tried searching for compilation errors, and general build questions/instructions here and on cyanogen's forum, but looks like CM6 is not very active these days.
Can someone point me into right direction where to search for relevant info on building it? Would getting a proper revision help or should I combine stuff from several branches to make it work?
I've already spent quite a lot of time figuring out how build is being configured and how things stitch together but without much progress on the actual build.
And with times required to sync a whole repo and build it, it is becoming frustrating.
Any help would be muchly appreciated!
Regards,
Oleg
It's dead.
I also wanted to make a cm6 rom, but I couldn't get anything to work.
I got the addresses all updated but it looks like a bunch of the files have completely dissappeared. You may be able to make it skip those, but then it may not work completely.
Go for AOSP?
Now that's a shame. I wanted to build CM because I'm familiar with it and the other thing is that they have reasonable instructions about building it. But at least I don't need to waste my time trying to figure out how to fix it.
In fact I don't need any extras they provide, a bare android would suffice to me if all the sensors and connectivity would be available. But I'm not familiar with internals of building vendor specific stuff. My understanding was that I need proprietary parts together with AOSP to build a working ROM and that's one of the things CM guys did. Correct me if I'm wrong.
aliher1911 said:
Now that's a shame. I wanted to build CM because I'm familiar with it and the other thing is that they have reasonable instructions about building it. But at least I don't need to waste my time trying to figure out how to fix it.
In fact I don't need any extras they provide, a bare android would suffice to me if all the sensors and connectivity would be available. But I'm not familiar with internals of building vendor specific stuff. My understanding was that I need proprietary parts together with AOSP to build a working ROM and that's one of the things CM guys did. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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Nope AOSP is as easy to build now
Go to the android site and follow directions
Google for "build android"
At the part when doing repo init you need to get the right branch
Go to "build for devices" then scroll down for recommended branches and look for the dream
One thing you'll need to do differently is do "make otapackage" instead of plain "make"
And once that's done you'll need to tweak the zip and get rid of the "recovery" folder and tweak the updater-script
Oh yeah, and I don't know exactly how you would do this part, but you'll need to get the source for a newer kernel in there, like ezterry kernel and use it with 2708+ radio/spl
Unless you wanna use the AOSP kernel & spl & radio which is old
What I did is just flash his kernel after the rom, but you want to do kernel stuff so yeah...
Sent from my HTC Dream using Tapatalk
Hello,
I searched through a lot of threads on how to compile CM, also checked CM wiki, but I want to compile AOSP, not CM. I want to compile it and maybe add some little tweaks to it. How do I compile it? I mean the device-specific part - which repositories, where do I put them (device, kernel,...) and so on?
I'm new to this, and also there's a problem with Ubuntu in VirtualBox, I cannot get my Galaxy S recognized via ADB in the virtual machine (Ubuntu). Just VirtualBox fails at connecting. So I want to ask also if there is any way to get proprietary vendor stuff from phone without using the extract-files.sh script? (another repository for this?)
I'm sorry if I'm starting a question that has been discussed before, but I couldn't find a thread about compiling AOSP for the galaxysmtd. I also checked malcho's thread for building unofficial nightlies and I'm lost there. Still don't know how...
Thanks in advance.
Yesterday, I decided to start giving back to the XDA Community by learning how to and building a rom. Being a beginner, I thought it would make most sense to simply Compile AOSP from source. Already, I have met a huge roadblock. A lot of the guides out there instruct you to get the proprietary binaries for the device. However, they Use nexus devices, and I can't seem to find these binaries for the HTC One. Is there anyone out there who can help me stumble my way to compiling AOSP for the HTC One?
Thanks,
Mihir
not the proper section should be in q&A
You probably want this
https://github.com/TheMuppets/proprietary_vendor_htc/tree/cm-10.2