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Queru: The Froyo Code Drop
Jean-Baptiste Queru talks
about the Android 2.2 code dump from Google. "In order to make
it easier for device manufacturers and custom system builders to use Froyo,
we've restructured our source tree to better separate closed-source modules
from open-source ones. We've made many changes to the open-source code
itself to remove unintentional dependencies on closed-source
software. We've also incorporated into the core platform all the
configuration files necessary to build the source code of Android
Open-Source Project on its own. You can now build and boot a fully
open-source system image out of the box, for the emulator, as well as for
Dream (ADP1), Sapphire (ADP2), and Passion (Nexus One)." The post
as a whole describes something which is beginning to look more like a real
open source project.
(Log in to post comments)
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 2:12 UTC (Thu) by dhess (subscriber, #7827) [Link]
Just curious, what parts of the Google Android distribution are closed-source?
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 2:38 UTC (Thu) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
There might be more, but at the very least the various Google apps (Market, Maps, Mail, etc) are closed source. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some GSM related items that exist only as binary blobs.
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 5:00 UTC (Thu) by swetland (subscriber, #63414) [Link]
The Google apps are not part of Android/AOSP -- they're just apps on top of the platform.
Typical closed system level components include:
We've managed to completely avoid binary kernel modules for any hardware that Google has been involved with (and we encourage others to avoid this, but I can't say for sure that no Android devices use 'em). The SoC venders we've been working iwth have been making great strides toward removing the need for proprietary code userspace code over the last few years.
Not perfect, but it does keep getting better.
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 11:23 UTC (Thu) by Shoragan (subscriber, #46596) [Link]
What does that mean when i build a "fully open-source system image"? No GSM/Camera/OpenGL?
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 13:24 UTC (Thu) by swetland (subscriber, #63414) [Link]
Right now, yes, we can't bundle the proprietary bits (at least not all of them -- some can be redistributed, many cannot) with the open source repository. We're working with the various silicon vendors to arrange for the proprietary bits to be made available through some kind of click-through-download sort of thing under a "you can use this on the hardware it was designed core" license of some sort. This has been taking a surprisingly long time to sort out (or maybe unsurprising if you spend time talking with lawyers...)
As an interim solution, we provide an extract-files.sh script as part of the device configuration repositories. This is used to extract the proprietary bits from your hardware and setup your build to include them. Obviously not ideal, but it gets the job done.
Something we're hoping to do in later revisions of the OS is to setup a specific hierarchy for proprietary bits (probably under /system/vendor/{bin,lib,etc}/... or the like) to make it easier to just leave the proprietary libraries alone when you update a device build (or to simplify locating them for backup and restore).
Website of Android Devs broken? Posted Jun 24, 2010 9:39 UTC (Thu) by Curan (subscriber, #66186) [Link]
Is it just me who can't scroll to the end of the Android Devs' homepage when ECMAScript is disabled or is that a "common problem"?
Website of Android Devs broken? Posted Jun 24, 2010 9:41 UTC (Thu) by Curan (subscriber, #66186) [Link]
Hm, just noticing: disabling CSS works too, so it might be a broken CSS instead of some fancy JS.
Website of Android Devs broken? Posted Jun 24, 2010 18:21 UTC (Thu) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]
I noticed that as well. At least on Firefox you can use the arrow keys for scrolling.
Webdevelopers Extension to the rescue Posted Jun 24, 2010 19:02 UTC (Thu) by Curan (subscriber, #66186) [Link]
As I wrote above [0] I went for disabling the CSS, that worked well and had the nice side effect of getting the page with a nice font size (at least for my resolution). :)
The reason why I suspected JS at first was, that their "Gerrit Code Review" thingy doesn't display anything useful without JS enabled (another broken by design system IMHO).
Cheers,
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 9:51 UTC (Thu) by juliank (subscriber, #45896) [Link]
They should stop doing code drops and start developing in the open, push commits ASAP. Others can do this as well.
Queru: The Froyo Code Drop Posted Jun 24, 2010 21:56 UTC (Thu) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link]
That's not practical for some parts of the code. CE vendors certainly don't want to telegraph to their competitors what their device capabilities are, before they announce them as products.
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