Android 4.1 in AOSP | Hacker News Reader

Android 4.1 in AOSP

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154 pointsFrancescoRizzi36 comments

Does anyone know which commit covers the reduction in functionality for the global search (related to the sales ban on the Nexus)? My friend is trying to find the commit so he can compile Jelly Bean (for the Galaxy Nexus) with the global search restored but neither of has been able to find where the change was made.

We were thinking it might be in the QuickSearchBox ( https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Quic... ) but there don't seem to be any recent commits here. I'm thinking now it might be in some place specific for the Nexus, but I'm not familiar enough with the Android source to know where to look.

Are you sure that change is in the AOSP source? It could easily be part of the Google Apps bundle instead (in which case reversing it would be trickier).

Hadn't thought of that, thanks. My friend compiled and installed AOSP Jelly Bean and you are indeed correct; global search works without limitation.

My guess would be that that patch is in some special factory branch that is not released publicly. Meaning that branches jb-dev and jb-release are clean and still have global search.

Building android requires a beefy developer workstation. Does your friend have the recommended 16GB of RAM[1]?

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/topic/android-building/N1exifTpP...

$100 worth of memory, so beefy.

Some older computer, like my 2009 MBP for example, can't be upgraded to more than 8gb of memory.

edit: I imagine that people interested in hacking on Android have better machines, so it's not a problem. I was pointing out that you can't just buy 16gb to meet the requirements on all machines.

16GB may be recommended, but I have built it before on a machine with 6GB. The initial build ran overnight, and subsequent builds seldom require a rebuild of the entire tree. I think it's certainly possible to manage a small change without 16GB available.

I build it on a 2G machine also on a 4G machine building process works just fine

That seemed pretty quick. And apparently it's a minor update, code wise, so hopefully we'll see some action from the CY devs soon. Though, ICS probably has to hit release first.

The Cyanogenmod developers have been taking CM9 development a bit differently to the past, trying to make it less hacky, so it is both more stable and easier to port features. Since Jelly Bean is a minor update, a lot of parts should have the same, or a similar API. This means the CM developers can literally forward port and backward port features between ICS and Jelly Bean with ease. So they will be releasing ICS and JB releases simultaneously.

Yes. CM has rewritten their modifications for ICS so that they integrate side-by-side with the OS settings. If you didn't see the boot screen or the ROM version, you would just think that you got a whole bunch more features and nice little performance tweaks. They did an amazing job of keeping it stock and adding functionality where it made sense. All without the awkward, disorganized "CMParts" of CM(<9). It's all quite wonderful.

I'd rather CM sticks as close as possible to AOSP. Fewer potential issues for them in the future, and they get more time to port to more devices, and to make the "master" ROM more stable.

You can always just take the vendor overlays and build JB-AOSP. Then you don't have to wait for merges.

Yes, JB will be in CM10, while CM9 dev continues. pretty much like it is currently being done with CM7&9.

More info about CM approach towards JB can be found here: https://plus.google.com/117962666888533781522/posts/PNJutPNh...

Could this point to an imminent Jelly Bean release for Nexus devices?

Google announced at I/O that JB would be coming to nexus devices in July and the Galaxy Nexus on the Play Store is supposed to ship with JB in 1-2 weeks. So pretty much.

You can already get Jelly Bean for the Galaxy Nexus, if you're willing to do a manual install. I've been running Jelly Belly[0], an LTE Jelly Bean rom, on my LTE Nexus for the last couple of days. There were a few issues with Jelly Belly v2.1 (tethering and camera), but as of Jelly Belly v2.4, it's been running without any hitches, Google Now and all.

0: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/28677-rom-jelly-belly-v26-0709201...

Until the factory images page gets updated, I'm staying put: https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images

Does anybody know if the new text-to-speech engine is part of AOSP? I'm referring to the tech Google got by buying Phonetic Arts.

What is AOSP?

The Android Open Source Project.

http://source.android.com/about/index.html

It's the subset of Android that is released as open source some time after the proprietary versions are shipped.

Is that supposed to be funny? No Jellybean devices have shipped to the general public yet the source has been released. Also, AOSP is not a sub-set of Android, AOSP is Android. Anything else is an add-on including the Google Apps.

Your snarky comment isn't even accurate. The only thing not released in AOSP is Google's propreitary APKs of the Google Apps (Market, Gmail, etc). One can build AOSP and have Android almost identical to Galaxy Nexus or what not. A small zip later, and it's nearly byte for byte identical.

You also forgot the proprietary drivers needed to actually use almost any of the devices on the market (including Google's own that they sell directly now).

While the original poster was being somewhat disingenuous, let's be honest here, Android isn't a completely open platform. To obtain full functionality from Android devices requires more than what Google distributes source code for.

I say this as a somewhat angry and disappointed Android developer :-(

How is that Google's fault though? How many modern mobile devices have completely open drivers including wifi, camera, accelerometer, bluetooth, and GPU? Exactly none. Even the raspberry pi has binary blobs. It doesn't make sense to blame Google for not being able to provide what doesn't exist.

I'm not blaming google; I'm just suggesting that Rubin's snarky twitter post about the "definition of open" is somewhat misleading.

Put simply, I'm just trying to point out the sad state of affairs.

Android is primarily run on Phones, but you can't actually use some of them as a Phone if you build AOSP and install it because some of the binaries required for the phone functionality can't be distributed.

That's my point. It's misleading to say "here's an open phone OS" -- when you can't actually use it on your phone, because the things that make your phone work as one aren't open and can't be redistributed.

An open platform doesn't do much good if you can't actually use it on hardware with full functionality.

As I said before, I'm just a disappointed and somewhat angry Android developer, somewhat. Google could have done a better job here and made life easier for me and other developers.

This is true of every smart phone in existence. Period. Even when OpenMoko tried it, they still had binaries. Luckily they were given permission to redistrib the binaries.

Android is the software that runs on many devices. Full functionality is the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to offer compatible drivers and software to enable the full functionality you're seeking.

The entirety of the OS is there for anyone who wants to hack together the functionality that you're "missing" but the OS is complete and open so far as I can see.

What the hell did Google Groups just do to my back button?

Looking forward to seeing this on Kindle fire soon.

I can't tell if that's sarcasm. You mean the new Kindle Fire which will be released for Christmas 2012, right?

I think he means an unofficial port. I expect those will be available fairly soon.

yes the unofficial port.

Here's a very early port (from the Galaxy Nexus build): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1753287

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