Porting 2.1 Questions

March 19, 2010

With great admiration of the efforts of Paul, who has made fantastic roms (and not just speculated like I have/am doing) I would like to give the modaco community a little more for thier pulses by helping out (if i can).

So ive been thinking about what to occupy my time with and I was wondering before i take on what will no doubt be a very hard challenge I'd like to know what it is I have to learn to port Android 2.1 to the Pulse. I have knowledge of java and C++ from a game developer background and I think that with a little more learning its possible I can adapt my knowledge to do this.

A lot of you are saying "its coming in may" and it may well come in may; however it will for my case at least come in a tmobile customised rom and after flashing to core android I really appreciate the lack of branding and perceived increase in responsiveness. I appreciate this can be done by adding and removing packages after an official release but you need an official release to take place first. I would take a gamble that after posts saying that they're no longer for sale that while they may be supported, I think this will only be for repairs etc and they wont get an over the air update.

So; where's a good place to start reading up on this? where do you learn about kernel compilation? how do i know what kernel mods for specific hardware i need? what other barriers other than a new kernel prevent android 2.1 from being ported to 2.1 on the pulse?

Finally I'm a little rusty and while i have all the time in the world to finish this (or untill i find employment) if anyone is interested in contributing or guiding me along the path to making this ROM let me know and i would be very appreciative.

March 19, 2010

With great admiration of the efforts of Paul, who has made fantastic roms (and not just speculated like I have/am doing) I would like to give the modaco community a little more for thier pulses by helping out (if i can).

So ive been thinking about what to occupy my time with and I was wondering before i take on what will no doubt be a very hard challenge I'd like to know what it is I have to learn to port Android 2.1 to the Pulse. I have knowledge of java and C++ from a game developer background and I think that with a little more learning its possible I can adapt my knowledge to do this.

A lot of you are saying "its coming in may" and it may well come in may; however it will for my case at least come in a tmobile customised rom and after flashing to core android I really appreciate the lack of branding and perceived increase in responsiveness. I appreciate this can be done by adding and removing packages after an official release but you need an official release to take place first. I would take a gamble that after posts saying that they're no longer for sale that while they may be supported, I think this will only be for repairs etc and they wont get an over the air update.

So; where's a good place to start reading up on this? where do you learn about kernel compilation? how do i know what kernel mods for specific hardware i need? what other barriers other than a new kernel prevent android 2.1 from being ported to 2.1 on the pulse?

Finally I'm a little rusty and while i have all the time in the world to finish this (or untill i find employment) if anyone is interested in contributing or guiding me along the path to making this ROM let me know and i would be very appreciative.

Hi,

first of all, porting Android 2.1 seems to be nearly impossible without the 2.6.29+ kernel.

Android 2.1 requires it, but we can't get it to run. We already tried to port Android 2.0 (and the 2.6.29 kernel) but without success.

Not even the kernel booted. The main problem is that we don't have the drivers we need for the kernel, and its far too much work to port this in a stand-alone job.

I'd really like to help you, as I already try to get Multitouch working. But thats the problem - I haven't got time for more projects atm.

A good point to start would be to compile the Huawei kernel source, compile andoird and see if it works.

Look therefore at the 1.6 ROM development thread.

If you're interseted about the Android 2.0 porting project and want to know how far we got look here: Android 2.0 ROM Development

But bewared, patching Android or the kernel is different to writing PC games.

Especially in the kernel. You don't edit an existing system, ore use its functions, but you write your own system and functions.

If you edit the drivers, you should have at least basic knowledge about how the HW works.

Greetings,

BigBear

March 19, 2010

A lot of you are saying "its coming in may" and it may well come in may; however it will for my case at least come in a tmobile customised rom and after flashing to core android I really appreciate the lack of branding and perceived increase in responsiveness. I appreciate this can be done by adding and removing packages after an official release but you need an official release to take place first.

I think we'll get our hands on a vanilla 8220 release from Huawei before T-Mob get round to skinning it in purple.

March 19, 2010

To get 1.6, the simplest upgrade, working, you'd need to reverse-engineer the RIL driver.

March 19, 2010

To get 1.6, the simplest upgrade, working, you'd need to reverse-engineer the RIL driver.

http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/dev.../telephony.html

from reading that and some RE sites; i dont see why its not possible. let me see what i can do. (dont expect a miracle here; its just something to pass my time that may or may not come to a working piece of code)

Edited March 19, 2010 by minid33

March 19, 2010

http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/dev.../telephony.html

from reading that and some RE sites; i dont see why its not possible. let me see what i can do.

I like you already. What do you know about the android kernel?

March 20, 2010

I like you already. What do you know about the android kernel?

Not a great deal; but i have plenty of time to read about it. This is a very different transition from working with boilerplate game engine code to more low level code.

With the reverse engineering im still looking for a good ARM disassembler to get the assembly code and from that I can most likely turn this into c++ with the use of reference RIL code (which i have found in the AOSP) and info from a few other sites. I'm willing to try anything as long as i learn from it. I cant promise results but I will share my findings if i have success or not. For now im doing more research.

March 21, 2010

Be aware, AOSP is very poorly documentated. It can be quite hard to find information on how things are supposed to work without working examples to examine : / I made some headway towards getting Wifi working in 1.6, by registering the ar6000 kernel module it uses with the android wifi stack, but it's a pain in the ass to debug. Good luck!