[Android-tools-devel] GSoC 2016 Week 2: Android SDK Tools in Debian

[Chirayu Desai]

Hi everyone,

Another week, another late report - hopefully the last, as my exams
ended last week (Saturday to be specific). I do have verbal exams left
still, but they're at least a week away and it won't take too much
time from me.

The week for me started with a meeting on Thursday, we discussed a lot
about the current state of this effort and how to proceed, and in
doing so made a big discovery.
The current code (as of today, in the master branch of
android-platform-frameworks-base.git [1]) to create android.jar
includes all the private android system-only APIs as well, which
increased it's complexity (the dependency list got big), and is not
what the SDK does.

The android build system is complex, and sdk build rules are spread
over multiple repos, which makes it hard to understand and easy to
overlook things like it happened above.
To try to avoid that, I have created a wiki page, AndroidTools/Build
[2], to document the build process. I am adding things as I discover
them, and also adding what I know from my experience of working with
the android platform.

Another topic which came up was code review, and my mentor proposed a
workflow, and we discussed about that on IRC, which I have summed up
as an e-mail to the mailing list [3].
I have also forked the repositories I'll be working with to my
personal gitlab account[4] to get started with what was said above. I
chose gitlab over github mainly due to the fact that it is in a way
more open source than github, the source for which isn't available,
and also the fact that I hadn't used it before this gave me a chance
to try something new.
I already have some patches which I'm tidying up and will be pushing
it there, and asking for a code review, after I am done with this
report.

This week should also mark the start of my actual coding phase, as
before this I had my final semester exams, which didn't leave much
time for Debian. I'm free for now though, which'll make me able to
give my 100% to Debian. Hoping to get a lot more done this week, and
send a timely report at the start of the next.

Regards,
Chirayu Desai

[1]: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/android-tools/android-platform-frameworks-base.git/tree/debian/build.gradle?id=80cf8199be0829e3fc9253710e28d08697e41f2e
[2]: https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools/Build
[3]: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/android-tools-devel/2016q2/001164.html
[4]: https://gitlab.com/u/cde