Month: October 2013

by sarbyn on Android

Mission Accomplished

My first CyanogenMod new (little) feature is born. Today I’ve finished the “Development shortcut” project. It enables the wipe data and application force close option in the recent tasks list and in the notification area. These options will be available only if the Development mode is enabled.

device-2013-11-02-140109 device-2013-11-02-140037

The first version is only for Motorola defy mb525 and is available on my github repo. I do a pull request to Quarx2k in order to merge my mod in his “official” Motorola repo.

The next step is to merge it in the official CM dev branch and submit it to gerrit review. But the first CyanogenmMod 10.2 M build is coming (this weekend) with the code freeze phase. I have to be quick!

 
by sarbyn on Android

Start android AOSP – CyanogenMod development : the firsts steps

I’m still waiting for my 9$ Arduino…some mistake in Hong Kong customs procedure has generated a huge delay in shipment.

But finally I found an “idea” for some Cyanogen development, and I want to share here the steps that I’m doing.

The Goal

At work I’m working on a feature that requires frequent “Force stop” and “Clear data” during the debug and development phase. I want to improve the “Application info” popup menu on the notification area (long click on the app notification) in order to add two new item: “Force Stop” and “Clear data”.

The Player

    • At the moment the Nexus S is not available, so I will use the ugliest android phone ever seen: the Motorola Defy (MB 526), aka “Jordan” – specs (From GSM arena)

image

    • I will use the CyanogenMod fork by Quarx2k, based on Android JB 4.1.2 – XDA forum post
    • My old development machine @ work – a Dell studio XPS with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

image

Step 0 : setup the development environment

Simply follow the post on XDA forum. After a few hours you should have your standard build from JB sources

Step 1 : setup a new github repo

I need to modify the “frameworks/base” project, because the notification area sources are in “frameworks/base/packages/SystemUI” folder.  Simply go to “https://github.com/Quarx2k/android_frameworks_base” and fork this repository. My forked repo location is “https://github.com/sarbyn/android_frameworks_base_jordan”

Now you need to add a “local_manifest.xml” in your .repo/local_manifests folder, in which you must define the new repository:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <manifest>
   <remove-project name="Quarx2k/android_frameworks/base"/>
   <project remote="github" path="frameworks/base" name="sarbyn/android_frameworks_base_jordan" revision="jellybean"/>
</manifest>

A simple explanation (from CM wiki)

  • remote — the name of the remote. this can be one that was defined in either the regular manifest or local_manifest.xml.
  • name — the name of the git project– for github it has the format account_name/project_name.
  • path — where the git repository should go in your local copy of the source code.
  • revision — (OPTIONAL) which branch or tag to use in the repository.

Now you are ready to “repo sync” your source tree.

Step 2 : start editing

Before you change anything you need to start a new git branch. Go into the main project folder and do a “repo start banchname frameworks/base“. Now you are ready to modify the code in a new git branch.

Step 3 : build

When all the development is done, do a full build with the standard procedure

source build/envsetup.sh && brunch mb526
make -j# bacon

# represents double the cores you have on your computer

Step 4 : commit and push on github repo

Enter in frameworks/base and check the repo status with git status. Add all the modified files with the standard git add FILENAME and commit the changes with git commit -m ‘message’. Now you are ready to upload the new git branch on server git push -u github branch_name

Step 5 : backup & install

The last step is very simple: go into recovery mode and do a full Nandroid backup. After that you can flash your build and try if it works 🙂

EUREKA!

EUREKA!