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Comment by FartyMcFarter | Hacker News Reader

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FartyMcFarter·

> Google, this small tech company (correct me if I'm wrong), is peddling source code via tarballs on google drive.

What is the context for this? It's not clear from the linked social media post.

The Android kernel source code is in git: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/

Plus there's a lot of other Android source hosted on Google's git servers: https://android.googlesource.com/

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The repositories you have linked are not sufficient to build an Android distribution. In order to get the missing bits, you have to fill out a form: https://source.android.com/opensourcerequest and beg them, and if they decide you are worthy, they will email you a link to a tarball, which is hosted on Google Drive.

>The Android kernel source code is in git: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/

That's the mainline kernel. Actual devices use various LTS kernels, for instance the pixel 9a uses kernel 6.1[1], which was hasn't been updated in a year[2]

[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/tegu/

[2] https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/tegu-kernels/...

There are other kernel 6.1 branches there, e.g. https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/refs/heads/...

I'm not sure which one the latest update for the Pixel 9a is using, I have an older Pixel 8. When I look at the Settings -> Android Version I can see it's using a build from January 2026 (also 6.1).

Reported here, among other places https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-kernel-code-fo...

It's mentioned in the same thread, just scroll up a few pages in the linked social post.

Yes I read the whole thread, but it wasn't clear which bits of source code required requesting a tarball.

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