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Could you explain why you would build in the cloud? Based on a sibling comment, it sounds like it might be because it’s crazy resource-intensive? I’ve honestly not heard of cloud building before. Is it common for large projects like operating systems?

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Yes, building AOSP requires a fairly powerful machine (at least to do it quickly): https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements. It's definitely possible to do on a local machine with decent specs though.

By my reading, my not-really-a-gaming-desktop could do it in 3 hours, that doesn't seem bad at all.

Now granted, those were heavyweight specs when Android came out in 2007, but I'd figure about half of us probably have a similar box sitting around today, and the other half would just need to beef one up with some additional RAM.

I haven't used a desktop since 2010 and my laptop is old. Building AOSP is the sort of huge compute-task that sticks out with its rarity.

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