halogenOS / android_manifest

Getting Started with XOS

0. Preliminary Knowledge

Before beginning this entire process, please ensure you have sufficient storage space. To carry out a single device build an excess of over 100 GB will be required. If building for more than one device, this amount of required storage increases. For speedy builds it is highly recommended that you store the sources in a fast storage medium such as Solid State Drives (SSDs), with modern computers it often turns out to be a greater bottleneck than the processor itself when compiling Android. If you decide to build on a SSD with lower capacity (less than 500 GB), make sure that you use MLC or SLC SSDs only as the lifetime of TLC and QLC SSDs will be impacted as you build the OS. You can also build on a HDD but keep in mind that doing so without a read/write cache (async mount option) will harm build speed as random access to storage is inherently slow on HDDs compared to SSDs.

It should also be noted that in order to build Android from source successfully, you will require a few build and compiler centric packages, this will vary from distribution to distribution. If you read on, you'll find more information as to what is necessary. Note that the tools needed depend on quite a few factors, some being out of our control, so please make sure you look the necessary packages up in case any is missing before contacting us about issues with the build.

Before you continue, make sure you follow the Setting up a Linux build environment guide as it contains a lot of useful and important information regarding building AOSP.

Arch builders, ahoy!

We recommend building on Arch as that is what we use for daily building and development. You can install all necessary packages using following commands:

sudo pacman -Syu --needed --noconfirm \
      base-devel bc ccache curl git gnupg \
      inetutils iputils net-tools libxslt ncurses \
      repo rsync python2 squashfs-tools unzip \
      zip zlib ffmpeg lzop ninja pngcrush openssl \
      gradle maven libxcrypt-compat xmlstarlet \
      openssh gperf schedtool \
      perl-switch ttf-dejavu imagemagick jq

curl -L https://github.com/halogenOS/arch_ncurses5-compat-libs/releases/download/v6.3-abi5-1/ncurses5-compat-libs-6.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst > ncurses5-compat-libs.pkg.tar.zst
sudo pacman --noconfirm -U ncurses5-compat-libs.pkg.tar.zst

CCache

We also recommend you to use CCache for faster builds (if you don't know what CCache is, do some research about it or skip this step):

In your environment (e. g. .bashrc and make sure you copy&paste the two lines into your terminal, adjusting the ccache directory appropriately. Seperate drive recommended.):

CCACHE_DIR="/path/to/ccache"
USE_CCACHE=1

Run following command to set the size limit of Ccache (minimum 80G recommended):

ccache -M 80G

1. Getting Started

To get started with XOS, you should first become familiar with the basics of the utilities named Git and repo, if using a development oriented distro or are already an actual developer working with source based Android ROMs or other similar projects you should more likely than not already have these obtained, if not here's an idea of what one should do below.

Installing repo

mkdir -p ~/bin
curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Now add the directory to your PATH variable in your environment (e. g. by appending it to your ~/.bashrc and running the same command in your shell)

export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

Installing git

If you followed the Arch Linux steps above, you can go right to step 2. Git would more likely than not probably be already installed in your distribution, if it is not then you should try one of the following terminal commands depending on your distribution:

Ubuntu, Debian (apt): apt-get install git
OpenSUSE: zypper install git
Fedora: yum install git-all
Gentoo: emerge --ask --verbose dev-vcs/git
Arch Linux: pacman -S git # this was listed above already, you can skip it

The derivatives of these common distributions should also have the git package available, if you believe your distribution does not offer git in the default package repositories then you may consider compiling and installing git from source.

2. Initiating Repository and Acquiring Sources

First, create a new empty directory of your choice, and cd into it:

mkdir xossrc
cd xossrc

Of course, you can use any directory name you desire. It is recommended to avoid spaces.

Now initialize a repo source tree, to do this please use following command:

repo init -u https://git.halogenos.org/halogenOS/android_manifest.git -b XOS-12.1

Then synchronize the source tree using repo, which will fetch the source of XOS. You should be warned that this is a procedure which downloads huge amounts (about 30-60 GB in total) of data, it may take hours to complete. Be prepared with something fun to do as will be waiting for a while or just listen to EDM.

repo sync -j4 -c --no-tags --no-clone-bundle -f build/make external/xos vendor/halogenOS
source build/envsetup.sh
reposync

3. Building

First, in order to build XOS you should source the build/envsetup.sh script in your shell, this will set up and import all of the available device configurations for the ROM as well as giving you some fancy "macro" commands for your build environment. As such, in order to do this, run the command:

source build/envsetup.sh

By running

lunch aosp_<device>-userdebug

you can fetch the device tree and its dependencies of devices hosted by us.

Now, you should select and configure the build target by using the lunch command. Type 'lunch', and a list of the available devices and build targets will be offered, give it a whirl, it won't bite.

Additionally here's a list of build types for your target device that you will likely encounter while running 'lunch'.

Before you start building, make sure that you have all necessary device-specific trees. Official trees, maintained by the team, can be retrieved using either:

breakfast <device>

...or;

lunch aosp_<device>-userdebug

Example:

breakfast cheeseburger

Or;

lunch aosp_cheeseburger-userdebug

At this point you should be able to build the ROM freely, all that's left to do is enter...

build full aosp_<device>-userdebug

Example:

build full aosp_cheeseburger-userdebug

This build command is a specialty made by the XOS team. It does everything for you, from lunching to initiating a new build, as well as finding out which amount of threads are optimal for your machine. Hence you must not specify a thread count using -j on this command, as that will be done automatically for you. If you want to do a dirty build (i. e. skip make clean), simply add noclean to the end of your command like this: build full aosp_<device>-userdebug noclean

In your terminal, the master chef that is 'Mr Compiler' (aka Ninja) will do the cooking of the ROM for you, this will take another while and depend on your storage speed and the capability of your CPU.

Once done you should find a cute flashable zip within out/target/product/<device>, this is your creation, you compiled it, she's yours, your own adorable pet... just make sure to treat her very nicely :).

Additional build notes : If you're bringing up a new device, our wiki has some important info

4. Flashing

If you do not know how to flash an Android ROM then you probably shouldn't have followed this guide in the first place, or have a case of amnesia, but in the case that you do need a briefing then here's a short guide on flashing XOS: https://goo.gl/BB53SU