Develop Bugs

android

hello,
their seems to be a few posts on this being ported to BA recently. ow ive got linux running on my BA fairly well (havent got round to setting up gprs etc yet though but thats a different matter) and id be willing to try and get a port of android working, if someone can extract the 3 img files in the android sdk as ive not managed to do that yet ? anyone want to try and help or am i talking of a lost cause

ok, ill post this incase anyone is watching. i made some progress getting andriod running but i keep getting seg fault tryingto run it, any1 who could provide insight let me know pelase

Unfortunately I can't help you but I'll be keeping a VERY close eye on this thread!
Good luck, I'm sure there are a whole load of people who'd buy you a beer if you succeed.
Steve

glad to see someones watching . ill have another play around over weekend see what i can come up with

it will be interesting to see how android works on BA keep up with the good work

Nice.
I like my BA and I don't wont to change it until an open linux mobile is avaible (an open Iphone could be great).
Maybe a sub-forum called "Blue angel linux" could help.
I'm bored or a problem with the actual BA linux is the acces to the wifi chipset?

And this seems noise. And I don't want to pay for having linux on my BA!
http://www.a-la-mobile.com/news/press/pr080114.html

aperles said:
I'm bored or a problem with the actual BA linux is the acces to the wifi chipset?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not the access, but a nice gui/setup.

remember linux is designed primarily for people who know what their doing. yes theirs guis now which help but you stil need command line to use linux properly. except on the iPhone and android from what ive seen

actually there was an earlier thread regarding android. and with 921+ adding 200+ views here, We bet there are people that are REALLY interested porting this.
hope we get it up and running.
anything for our BA.
even alternatives to WM6 are welcome.

well im not having a lot of look, it seems to be segfaulting pretty much constantly. think its down to the busybox shell though so im going to find a newer one and try that later, does anyone know what version of the arm feature set the BA uses. (because from reading http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/21/android-neo1973) android only seems to work on devices using ARMv5 featureset. whatever that means)
UPDATE: thats not a problem, the pxa263 in the BA is ARMv5TE so thats ok - gotta love wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale)
Further update: ok been reading up a bit more and im doing the risky thing of building my own kernel for android see if i can get round these damn segfaults

ok just thought id post up so people done think ive given up here . still havign issues compiling the linux kernel with the android addidtions. mainly because i ahvent got a proper linux machine at home (only virtual pc on this computer)...dont suppose anyone uses linux and has a decent knownledge of compiling kernels on here ??

DJ_Steve said:
ok just thought id post up so people done think ive given up here . still havign issues compiling the linux kernel with the android addidtions. mainly because i ahvent got a proper linux machine at home (only virtual pc on this computer)...dont suppose anyone uses linux and has a decent knownledge of compiling kernels on here ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've compiled kernels under Linux before, but not for an embedded system like the angel's.
Where did you get the tarballs for everything? And what distro of Linux did you install?
Really, real machine vs virtual machine, in this case, shouldn't matter. It might, but shouldn't.

not so much the fact im using a virtual machine, its the fact im only on a 2mb connection so downloading linux cd images takes ages and since debian is the only distro ive seen which has arm crosscompile tools that work that means 2 dvds or 9+cd images. most of the tarballs ive had to rip direct from the android sdk emulator. i could host them somewhere if someone wants to try and help me out getting a kernel running - after that i think most of android should fall into place on its own, but getting openbinder support in the kernels proving difficult
EDIT/UPDATE: ok just tried installing the arm crosscompiliers on my development dedicated server and it seems to be compiling a kernel as i type (hopefully) so looks to be some progress happening here

Been following your thread with interest.
I should be getting a new PDA from work, so then I could take the risk of bricking my trusty and battered Blue Angel.
Any chance you could post some links to the various bits you are using? Not a step by step (unless you have the time) but the starting points so others can attempt to duplicate your efforts in parallel?
Good luck - I'm rooting for you!

ok, im just tarballing up the files on my webserver now, didnt have any success with kernel, looks like im going to have to take the blueangel drivers etc from the kernel posted on handhelds.org and manually merge the config files into the android kernel image to get it to compile. unless anyone can suggest a way to do that easily (windows or linux routine i dont mind)
the main sites ive used to help out ive listed below
http://benno.id.au/blog/ << somewhere on their theirs a link to the android root filesystem image. (http://benno.id.au/android/system.tar.gz and http://benno.id.au/android/data.tar.gz)
http://nemustech.blogspot.com/2007/12/android-porting-to-real-target-hw.html
http://euedge.com/blog/2007/12/06/google-android-runs-on-sharp-zaurus-sl-c760/
http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/BlueAngelKernel
the three above above links help even though their not scriptly related to android on blueangel
the rest of the files are in http://radiodmp.net/android-files/ - the 365mb file contains the 2 arm cross compilers and also both the newest blueangel linux kernel and the android kernel - as said above these need merging (android kernel needs to be the one that is the final kernel as its newer i believe
edit: ive just put the system and data tars linked above into the folder on my server also to save people time.
hope that helps
if anyone wants any help drop me a message and ill try and help out. will of course keep trying to sort it myself too

Any update on this?
Actively watching this thread and just wanted to know. I'd love to be able to play with Android.

good to see ppl interested. ive not had time to try and merge the kernels yet, hopefulyl might get chance this week

DJ_Steve said:
good to see ppl interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still watching, still interested!
Keep it up.
Steve

ok managed to hack together the two kernels, compiling it as i type - hopefully it'll workon my BA

[Q] Which (Android) forum does my post belong in?

I have made an auto-installer for Linux that will download, install, and setup the Android SDK, NDK, Eclipse, ADB, and create a 99-android.rules file without the user having to do anything. I was curious which section I should post this in?

Tahl said:
I have made an auto-installer for Linux that will download, install, and setup the Android SDK, NDK, Eclipse, ADB, and create a 99-android.rules file without the user having to do anything. I was curious which section I should post this in?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice work!
I'd say in the Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking forum itself, but I may be wrong. That's the general, non-device specific development forum, and forum for devices without their own forum.
Perhaps a Mod could clarify this for us? Oh Scotsman, where art thou?

Interesting, I didn't even think about that as a possibility, I was looking at the Android Software and Hacking General or Android Software Development. Mostly because that's where people asking about ADB were, but now I'm not sure.

To be honest I'd put it in all three, as it's a worthy addition to any Linux users' toolkit.
May want to double-check with someone who actually knows what they're talking about first, and possibly just post it in one place and get some user feedback first, so you know it works on all machines

Well, I've had quite a few testers and positive feedback on Linux Mint 11 and Ubuntu 11.04 for both the 32/64-bit versions. I just wanted to share it with xda-developers so that more people would be able to use it. It's already on RootzWiki and I've had people test it from my blog with some help from P3Droid's retweet power. The deb version I'm pretty confident in will work without many people having troubles. The .sh version that I also have hasn't been tested with any operating systems outside of that, but I'd like some feedback with people using apt-get and other operating systems.

I have asked Scotsman to come and provide a little clarification for us. I honestly think you've made a very vaulable contribution here, so thankyou from all of us far too stupid to do something like this!

I posted it in Android Software and Hacking General.
I thought that would be a good spot for it based on how many adb related guides and posts there were in that section. If Scotsman would like to move it or delete it though, I can gladly repost it in a more appropriate (or multiple) forums so that it can get more attention. I really appreciate the help you've given me too.

Hmmm...I'd say maybe Android Software and Hacking General or maybe Android Software Development? Since it's only Android specific...

I'll stick to the Hacking General then, I think that I saw the most related material there while I was posting. Thanks for the help you two, I appreciate it.

You're welcome mate, I wish everyone's first few posts could be as productive
Enjoy your time at XDA! Let me know if I can help with anything else

Development Setup

Hi
I am looking into starting out in developing Android Apps and modding the Source OS itself. I have had a little search round on here but given the fact it seems impossible to force the search to use the exact search its bringing up hundreds of non-sense results (had to use google to find the modded Google Currents apk on this site).
Anyway what I am interested to know is what environment dev's are using and is it possible to do it all in a Windows OS or is this not a good idea?
Any help very much appreciated with getting good setup from the start and all opinions welcome.
Thanks in advance
James

1. Wrong section - should be in General
2. You'd have seen stickied right at the top of the General section this thread - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1386615

1. seeing as this is about android development I think it is in the right section especially as I have posted the exact same question in the general Android Q&A (Not phone specific) area and not got a single reply.
2. I would have seen the sticky if the search function on this site was written by a coder that died after Jesus!
Thanks for the pointer though its exactly what I wanted - thank you

The Development forum here is pretty much exclusively for ROM/Kernels, anything else goes elsewhere. Not my rules but you'll get flamed so better just to use General/Q&A for anything not ROM-related

Ah I see - I didn't know - thanks for this and the link!
Much appreciated!
all the best
J

Generally the development forums are reserved for sharing your work with others. ROMs, kernels, scripts, etc.
If you're familiar with Linux it's usually easiest to do everything from there, however I do a lot of my work while booted in to Win7 and run Ubuntu through Virtual Box. I'm set up to dualboot with linux mint, but I'm so used to windows that it's usually more convenient. Cygwin is also a very helpful tool to use if you are using windows.
The Android Development & Hacking and Chef Central forums are also good places to look for information.

xHausx said:
Generally the development forums are reserved for sharing your work with others. ROMs, kernels, scripts, etc.
If you're familiar with Linux it's usually easiest to do everything from there, however I do a lot of my work while booted in to Win7 and run Ubuntu through Virtual Box. I'm set up to dualboot with linux mint, but I'm so used to windows that it's usually more convenient. Cygwin is also a very helpful tool to use if you are using windows.
The Android Development & Hacking and Chef Central forums are also good places to look for information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand and hope I can do a bit of sharing in the future . What IDE are you using if you don't mind me asking?

jamesmcuk said:
I understand and hope I can do a bit of sharing in the future . What IDE are you using if you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use Eclipse but just because that's what was suggested by google when you download the android sdk. I started to set up netbeans to try it out but never got around to using it

yeah I have eclipse and also read about it through google. Thanks for confirming this to be the best method, I shall give it a go.
Thanks very much for your help
J

if you want to develop android apps in java you install eclipse in windows. If you want to develop the kernel or roms in c++ you install ubuntu linux in a virtuak machine on windows.

Why do ROM developers put BusyBox in their ROMs?

Why?

It is needed to have root on your device. Google it, to get more details
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

I myself dont know and it would be nice to have an explanation here as most of us are new to this rooting and bricking jargon simple explanations of these things will help "COMMUNITY" members hence why we have a section
HTC one X Q&A
It very easy to tell someone Google it
as Einstein said: "If you cannot explain it simply then you don't understand it well enough"
check this video out I found it, however I cannot view it due to Admins blocking Youtube http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&rc..._92TCg&usg=AFQjCNGRf354aisVBQXiO8jVypBAj91PLg
Edit:
Not my intention to be Rude but this is a Q&A and we need to be helpful as a Community not make people not want to ask questions

BusyBox is a package containing a whole range of "program commands" and/or "scripts" (tools). It is with these extra tools, specific tasks can be performed.
Once a custom ROM has BusyBox installed, it means that scripts on the ROM and apps in the ROM can use make use of the tools to perform their tasks.
For example "dd" is a known linux command/tool for block-by-block copying and dumping. However "dd" does not exist until BusyBox is installed. Other popular tools are "uname" to get the kernels name/details, and "ls" is to list the contents of a directory/folder (similar to "dir" in DOS). There are about 50 or more of these commands packaged inside "BusyBox". Whenever there are new versions of BusyBox installed (as you may see in the changelogs for some custom ROM's), this is simply because BusyBox has included either new versions of some of its tools, or perhaps added additional tools to the package.
Hope that helps answer your question. However to be honest, I found all that out by SEARCHing this forum.
- WizzKidd

wizzkidd said:
BusyBox is a package containing a whole range of "program commands" and/or "scripts" (tools). It is with these extra tools, specific tasks can be performed.
Once a custom ROM has BusyBox installed, it means that scripts on the ROM and apps in the ROM can use make use of the tools to perform their tasks.
For example "dd" is a known linux command/tool for block-by-block copying and dumping. However "dd" does not exist until BusyBox is installed. Other popular tools are "uname" to get the kernels name/details, and "ls" is to list the contents of a directory/folder (similar to "dir" in DOS). There are about 50 or more of these commands packaged inside "BusyBox". Whenever there are new versions of BusyBox installed (as you may see in the changelogs for some custom ROM's), this is simply because BusyBox has included either new versions of some of its tools, or perhaps added additional tools to the package.
Hope that helps answer your question. However to be honest, I found all that out by SEARCHing this forum.
- WizzKidd
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
^^ hit the nail on the head. That's not to say that busybox is the ONLY way to get those tools. It's just the slimmest. There are more robust gnu equivalents of the tools that it includes, but they're nowhere near its tiny footprint.
Busybox is a pretty neat application though, since all of the tools that it provides are housed in one binary (busybox). The other commands operate with symlinks named appropriately for their function (su, etc.). The binary detects the name of the symlink that invoked it and behaves appropriately. It's commonly used in environments where not much space is available (recovery environments, embedded systems, etc.)
--Matt

jinkira said:
I myself dont know and it would be nice to have an explanation here as most of us are new to this rooting and bricking jargon simple explanations of these things will help "COMMUNITY" members hence why we have a section
HTC one X Q&A
It very easy to tell someone Google it
as Einstein said: "If you cannot explain it simply then you don't understand it well enough"
check this video out I found it, however I cannot view it due to Admins blocking Youtube http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&rc..._92TCg&usg=AFQjCNGRf354aisVBQXiO8jVypBAj91PLg
Edit:
Not my intention to be Rude but this is a Q&A and we need to be helpful as a Community not make people not want to ask questions
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The main reason people here get told to Google a problem is because more likely than not, the answer you'll get from the search engine will be a page from XDA...
There's also a search box within XDA too, I found these pages using it, they would have answered the OPs question, there wasn't really a need for this thread.
Not trying to be rude but the search is there for a reason and these questions have been asked hundreds of times before
http://busybox.net/FAQ.html#whatis

thank you all for the feedback it is much appreciated
oh and I did do a search but only on the HOX forum not the entire site, and Searching only th HOXX forum there were fragmented pieces of info, but anyways Thanks you guys

[Q] Help! Please!

Sorry in advance if there's a tutorial already out, but i can't seem to find it. I want to begin by modding themes. I have d/l and installed apk manager, sdk tools, java, eclipse and have, as far as i know, associated everything properly. My prog exp is little: some visual basic and turbo pascal in college, along with a flirting fascination with assembly. My thought was i would begin by modding code instead of learning java outright, but if i have to learn c or java that is just fine. where? Anyway, every time i run script.bat in apk manager, i receive an error. Put .apk in mod folder, run script.bat, start project (the .apk is (1)) 1, decompile...error! what am i doing wrong? If anything, just point me in the direction of a good tutorial.

mgofpickens said:
Sorry in advance if there's a tutorial already out, but i can't seem to find it. I want to begin by modding themes. I have d/l and installed apk manager, sdk tools, java, eclipse and have, as far as i know, associated everything properly. My prog exp is little: some visual basic and turbo pascal in college, along with a flirting fascination with assembly. My thought was i would begin by modding code instead of learning java outright, but if i have to learn c or java that is just fine. where? Anyway, every time i run script.bat in apk manager, i receive an error. Put .apk in mod folder, run script.bat, start project (the .apk is (1)) 1, decompile...error! what am i doing wrong? If anything, just point me in the direction of a good tutorial.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure if what you're looking for would be there, but have you checked the General Android Development forum? http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=613
I'm sure you would be able to get more detailed help there, since you are talking about non device specific development. Good luck!

lordcheeto03 said:
I'm not sure if what you're looking for would be there, but have you checked the General Android Development forum? http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=613
I'm sure you would be able to get more detailed help there, since you are talking about non device specific development. Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you! I've seen some, but not all. I have a nitro, so dev would be geared towards that. further along i was/would ask how you get the emulator to approximate the lg nitro, but for now i thought i'd stick with just requesting a solid tut.

mgofpickens said:
Thank you! I've seen some, but not all. I have a nitro, so dev would be geared towards that. further along i was/would ask how you get the emulator to approximate the lg nitro, but for now i thought i'd stick with just requesting a solid tut.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never messed with it, to be honest... I've got so many things I want to do but can't seem to find a good starting point for any of it. Pretty sure I've downloaded eclipse, JDK, and the android SDK in both windows and linux environments but that's about as far as I've gone... I may have installed them, not 100% sure. I get side-tracked too easily. :cyclops: