Ok just to make this clear, i am only slightly above a complete novice skill-wise, and i understand this is a experienced developers forum, but me and two of my buddies set ourselves the goal of creating an ultra-light weight android ROM, and i though i'd ask here for help. Since we're a tad clueless.
1.) What programs should i use to edit/compile the code? BTW, i'm stuck with 32bit windows 7 something or other. not enough money to buy parts or new laptop.
2.)Where do i get the actual code for the vanilla version of android? idk if i'm dumb, or if it really is that hard to find, or i'm not searching everywhere, but i can't find it.
3.)If anyone actually looks at this thread, do you have any tips for making a rom (besides prior experience. i thought this was a good way to get experience. instead i'm frustrated. immensely so.)
Ok
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Hi All
Just arrived at this place after doing a Google search. To be honest I am not sure what I want to do with this phone! I got given it by a mate who thought I might like to play with it! It has a couple of scratches in the screen!
Anyway, I thought I would have a go at installing Linux on the device. But after reading various bits I am not any the wiser! I generally use a Mac but I do have an Ubuntu box and access to an xp box. What I would like to do is install linux as an os on the XDA II. What are the links to do this please? I have never done anything like this, so I'll be walking in the dark, is ti going to be possible? Or do I need a degree in technical stuff?
Any help would be much appreciated or maybe there is someone in the uk who has a better idea of what to do with this phone!
Thanks.
Rich
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=XanaduxUserHome
So I'm going to try to start doing some dev work. I feel like my programming and hardware background is sufficient enough that I should be able to pick it up fairly quickly especially with some of the tools I've already found.
Question for the existing devs working on the note...
Are you using a tool like Custom ROM Creator Studio or are you doing it by other means? I looked and there doesn't appear to be a book I could read to help me along like I've done in the past with other languages/etc. Are you doing it directly through a linux box? I have a lot of questions as I am beginning this process but for now I have to go off of what I find through google and here. So any help or direction would be appreciated. Thanks!
Edit: I'm currently reading through the documentation at source.android.com
If you don't get and responses I would suggest searching in the general forum area of xda, I found good info on developing there when I was thinking about it.
Sent from my SGH-I717R using xda premium
supermerkin said:
If you don't get and responses I would suggest searching in the general forum area of xda, I found good info on developing there when I was thinking about it.
Sent from my SGH-I717R using xda premium
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Searching through the general forum now. Finding a lot of device specific stuff, specifically HTC. I'll keep looking though. Thanks for the tip!
Still doing my homework...any teachers that can tell me what homework I should be doing would still be nice
I admire your courage. Best of luck. We need more devs.
kimtyson said:
I admire your courage. Best of luck. We need more devs.
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I'm setting up my dev environment on my mac now. With some time (and maybe some luck) I can start moving on this. I'm going to have to set up the same environment on my mac at home as well so I can play around there too. I didn't realize that I'd have to set up such a huge virtual machine to do the development on my windows machine. Didn't really want to give up all that space.
I love my note but want that power that those devs have! Back when I was on my Galaxy S II I went nuts trying to find the one ROM that had everything I wanted but could never find that one ROM that suited me. I have to admit that is my driving force for wanting to develop. Obviously I'll be happy to share what I do (if I really am able to do something) and even support what I release because thats what a good dev does
I've been programming since I was 12. Taken some college courses but dropped out because I knew more than the instructors and was bored out of my mind. Ended up with a job at that university! Now I'm just hoping I can pick up the android os like I was able to pick up everything else.
I am a new Xperia Ultra owner and whilst not planning to do any flashing just yet I thought tonight I'd take a quick look at threads discussing steps that would be involved in doing this.
Let me qualify what I'm about to say by stating that I appreciate people on this site who develop tools which allow us to hack our devices so we can make better use of our phones. They are incredibly skilled, gifted and generous with their time. I would love to be able to spend the time learning how to do this but I simply don't have the time. So please don't take what I am about to say as a criticism but more as an observation, considering the effort contributors put into this it would indeed be incredibly foolish of me to criticise anyone here.
I can probably safely say that none of the contributors are also trained technical writers and a fair number do not have English as their first language. Its my first and only language and I often have difficulty getting the meaning across succinctly not to mind getting the spelling right . And I know even for large software houses support documentation is not a priority.
I want to approach hacking my phone with confidence this time round. In the past I've reflashed several phones for myself and friends and simply followed steps and not really understanding completely what the hell I was doing. Lordmanhattan I know I sent you an email regarding a contradiction on your thread. And you very kindly got back to me very quickly.....amazing, thank you. And then there is the "TA partition", WTH is that? I did very briefly google this to find a quick answer but no joy....grrrr (also looked in the XDA Wiki acronyms) I'm sure if I looked hard enough I'd find it. It's mentioned everywhere but nobody seems to be offering an explanation what it is or what it does or why it's important or what it stands for !!!!
Very often I find threads on here describing how to do something hard to follow and this is often for the following reasons:
It could be that there is more than one way to achieve something so its a case of different people offering varied procedures, this can be confusing
A process may be described but then to the newbie the author seems to miss out on a step that to the experienced is obvious
The level of English used leads the reader to scratching their head wondering ...did he/she mean this or that
Threads not being updated or corrected even after feedback
Okay I won't go on.
So I have decided my time might be well spent doing some background research before delving into messing about with my Xperia Z Ultra and saving you guys from having to deal with daft questions from me.
Now does this mean I have to spend time reading through threads and trying to piece it all together to find the best way through and possibly getting the wrong end of the stick or reading superseded posts?
OR
Are there a couple of sites that will get me up to speed understanding the terminology, hardware, memory management, etc for my phone?
I have a feeling it's going to be a bit of both......your suggestions please
Oh, I stumbled across XDA University but got the impression it wasn't being maintained???
Some of the pages I visited....
A New User’s Guide to Android.......unfortunately none of the images for this page loaded
Video guides .................................had flash presentations which didn't load
Ferg8080 said:
I am a new Xperia Ultra owner...
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A good and detailed post, and it's not just the dev's and support that could take note. Some of the people that ask questions really need to read your post and think about what they are trying to say, get help with -- we aren't mind readers either.
I always try and help anew user by using as few TLA as possible in a reply to them. I also try to do the steps as #'d lists with as many steps as possible.
I do think LordManhattan's guide needs a little love as a few things are a little out of date - but it is as comprehensive guide as you could get, and most vagaries are covered in the thread.
TA = trim area, where your unique DRM keys are stored, and god only knows what else.
Thanks for your well written post! First I want to say - like Blueether just did, that we are not mind readers, so we can't possible know people's skill level or what they want to do. That's why I've started to ask them straight up what they want to do and where in the process they are. That way it'll be easier for me to help the other person, and hopefully write a short but complete step by step guide. It won't happen that often, but if I got some time to spare, why not.
My guide is a little out of date now, and I have planned to update it for quite some time, but things are moving so god damn quick around here that even I will get outdated if I take a short break. I recently sent my Ultra in for repairs, and 12 days later when I got it back and ready to get back in the game, a new firmware had been released with a new rooting method. I knew everything one day, and nothing on the other. It's really hard to balance real life and being kept updated at all times. Don't forget that you must be sure about what you know and write when you make a guide, because you don't want to brick people's devices. One slipup and the consequences might be ugly.
There are (of course) one or four ways of doing things around here, and you'll probably get different ways of doing things if you ask me or blueether about rooting or flashing custom ROMs. I guess it's just the way it is. New methods also pop up once in awhile, so some people will adopt these new methods while some other people will stick with the old school method, thus making things a little more complicated for new people who are looking for reliable information.
The TA partition is, like blueether already said, your device's unique DRM keys which makes X-Reality (and other minor things, I guess) work. It's important to make a backup of this partition since you'll lose it when you unlock the bootloader. Why would you unlock the bootloader? You have to unlock it if you want to flash custom ROMs, or if you want to make rooting easier. The problem is that you need to be rooted to back it up, so you'll have to spend some time reading and researching before you start.
Just keep your Ultra stock for now, and just casually read and soak up stuff from different threads around here. Walk around like you do in a new city and check out the locals and see what they do and say. You'll pick up a few things here and there and things will start rolling from there.
Sent from my C6806_GPe using Tapatalk
blueether said:
A good and detailed post, and it's not just the dev's and support that could take note. Some of the people that ask questions really need to read your post and think about what they are trying to say, get help with -- we aren't mind readers either.
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LordManhattan said:
a new firmware had been released with a new rooting method. I knew everything one day, and nothing on the other. It's really hard to balance real life and being kept updated at all times. Don't forget that you must be sure about what you know and write when you make a guide, because you don't want to brick people's devices. One slipup and the consequences might be ugly.
some other people will stick with the old school method, thus making things a little more complicated for new people who are looking for reliable information.
Just keep your Ultra stock for now, and just casually read and soak up stuff from different threads around here.
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Yes you can see some people just rush in with questions without giving serious thought to what they want to achieve. I think its people who don't often understand the process properly, haven't thought it through and are following what seems like a straightforward step by step process. Understanding what you are doing requires patience and TIME.
XDA I think is an unrivalled repository of amazing contributions from amazing people on a technology that is constantly evolving. Its also a jungle. One doesn't go into the jungle unprepared
Thanks for the fantastic advice guys and I will heed but I can't promise I might come out with some corkers
One last thing, how on earth do you find the time to lead a normal life? You obviously love what you are doing. It might be easy to assume everyone who contributes here is in IT. I imagine there are plumbers, electricians, mechanics, office workers, retired folk.....
Hello!
I'm currently studying in the last high school year and I'm thinking in going for Informatics and Computing Engineering at the College so most likely I'll be connected to this kind of development work...
Despite knowing some basic things of HTML and CSS and programming little programs in C or C++ I am still noob and don't really have knowledge to call myself a programmer but I'm interested and "self prompted" to learn more and more about this world and I believe some Android would be good for me.
Well, I am thinking in trying to learn alone in my free time with the objective to be able to build a custom rom for myself or something like that. I also want to make some apps... well, some Android things not only for myself but also to share here and help the others like I've been helped since ever. But... well I am realistic and I believe it isn't that easy and I need to take the right way, that's why I'm asking here for some advice and information... how did you developers learn what you learned? was it from the internet and practice at home or did you take any course? how much time did you need to learn the basics and start your experiments?
Thanks in advance!
Well its not for everyone.. I mean its not that easy. Ive been trying to pull of something myself and didnt succeed yet. But im gonna try till it succeeds. Just dont give up. There are plenty of guides around. Im sure youll figure it out!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
There are some resources in these forums:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/coding
http://forum.xda-developers.com/app-development
http://forum.xda-developers.com/chef-central
I've bookmarked them all, thanks ^^
Hello everyone,
At first, as a new member, let me congratulate you for this amazing forum and the community that is built around it. A lot of useful and interesting stuff can be found here, and I know that it takes a lot of hard work to boost and maintain a forum to this high-quality level, create a community and share knowledge, so thank you for that and keep up the good work.
To get to the point, I recently became the owner of a Google Nexus 5 and 3 days ago I upgraded the preinstalled Android 4.4 to Android 5.0. Before that, I used a Nokia N900 phone with Maemo 5 and ArchLinux (desktop Linux Distribution), and this Nexus became my introduction to the Android operating system for the first time.
So as a newbie to Android, I want to ask toy a few questions on how to make some things done.
While I had my Android rooted before, after the upgrade it probably needs rooting again, so I'd be grateful if someone points out a link to a tutorial that describes this process. I also need to install an anti-theft application, and from what I've seen, Cerberus just does what I want, but I need to install it in a way that even if someone restored the phone to its default settings or even format it, the application woud stay in place. From what I've read, it is possible, right? I don't know how, maybe it has something to do with the ROM, which brings me to my next question. Custom ROMs, what are they? How do they get installed and which one do you suggest for Nexus 5?
As for now, those are my questions. I know that I could use Google to find out more about those stuff, but I really want to learn how they work, not just how to accomplish them, and all my searches in Google result in different ways to achieve the same thing, a fact that confuses me instead of teaching me stuff. That's why I ask here.
So, if anyone could point out some links or explain to me how to do the things I want, I'd be very grateful.
Also, besides all those things, any suggestions you might have of any nature, I'd be glad to hear them and they'll be much appreciated!
Than you very much in advance. I appologize to the forum and its moderators if I posted this in a wrong category or broke any rule. I assure you that if I did, it was not intetional.
Best regards,
Elias
Should I post this over to the Google Nexus 5 forums?
[SOLVED]
Ok, after a lot of reading, I finally understood the whole concept of ROMs and Recovery.
For anyone having trouble with his first steps on those issues as well, the following links would be very useful:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/faq-to-android-read-post-root-t2508292
http://forum.xda-developers.com/goo...ide-nexus-5-how-to-unlock-bootloader-t2507905
http://forum.xda-developers.com/goo...olkit-wugs-nexus-root-toolkit-v1-8-3-t2517778
http://forum.xda-developers.com/goo...nux-universal-nexus-linux-toolkit-v2-t2528616
Good luck!