Build Android Source Code

Setting up your machine

To build the Android source files, you will need to use Linux or Mac OS. Building under Windows is not currently supported.

Linux

The Android build is routinely tested on recent versions of Ubuntu (6.06 and later), but reports of successes or failures on other distributions are welcome.

Ubuntu Linux (32-bit x86)

To set up your Linux development environment, make sure you have the following:

Required Packages: Git 1.5.4 or newer and the GNU Privacy Guard.

JDK 5.0, update 12 or higher.Java 6 is not supported, because of incompatibilities with @Override.
flex, bison, gperf, libsdl-dev, libesd0-dev, libwxgtk2.6-dev (optional), build-essential, zip, curl.
You might also want Valgrind, a tool that will help you find memory leaks, stack corruption, array bounds overflows, etc.
Intrepid ( 8.10) users may need a newer version of libreadline:
$ sudo apt-get install lib32readline5-dev

Ubuntu Linux (64-bit x86)

This has not been as well tested. Please send success or failure reports to android-porting@googlegroups.com . The Android build requires a 32-bit build environment as well as some other tools:

Required Packages: Git, JDK, flex, and the other packages as listed above in the i386 instructions:
JDK 5.0, update 12 or higher.Java 6 is not supported, because of incompatibilities with @Override.
Pieces from the 32-bit cross-building environment
X11 development

Set the system to use the right version of java by default:
$ sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-1.5.0-sun
X11: Ubuntu doesn't have packages for the X11 libraries, but that can be worked around with the following command:
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libX11.so.6 /usr/lib32/libX11.so

Running Linux in a virtual machine

If you are running Linux in a virtual machine, you will need at least 1.5GB of RAM and 10GB or more of disk space in order to build the Android tree.

Other Linux

There's no reason why Android cannot be built on non-Ubuntu systems. Please send any success or failure reports to android-porting@googlegroups.com . In general you will need:

Python 2.4, which you can download from python.org.
JDK 5.0, update 12 or higher, which you can download from java.sun.com. Java 6 is not supported, because of incompatibilities with @Override.
Git 1.5.4 or newer. You can find it at http://git.or.cz/.
Anything missing from this list? Please let us know!

Mac OS

Requirements:

To build the Android files in a Mac OS environment, you need an Intel/x86 machine running MacOS 10.4 ("Tiger") or 10.5 ("Leopard"). At the moment MacOS 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") is not supported. The Android build system and tools do not support the obsolete PowerPC architecture.
Android must be built on a case-sensitive file system. We recommend that you build Android on a partition that has been formatted with the "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" file system: A case-sensitive file system is required because the sources contain files that differ only in case.
Journaled systems are more robust. (This is optional, but recommended.)
HFS+ is required to successfully build Mac OS applications such as the Android Emulator for OS X.

If you want to avoid partitioning/formatting your hard drive, you can use a case-sensitive disk image instead. To create the image: launch /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
select "New Image"
size: 8 GB (this will work, but you can choose more if you want to)
volume format: case sensitive, journaled

This will create a .dmg file which, once mounted, acts as a drive with the required formatting for Android development. For a disk image named "android.dmg" stored in your home directory, you can add the following to your ~/.bash_profile to mount the image when you execute "mountAndroid": # command to mount the android file image
function mountAndroid { hdiutil attach ~/android.dmg -mountpoint /Volumes/android; }

Once mounted, you'll do all your work in the "android" volume. You can eject it (unmount it) just like you would with an external drive.

To set up your Mac OS development environment, follow these steps: Install the XCode version 2.4 or later from http://developer.apple.com. We recommend version 3.0 or newer.
Install MacPorts. To do this: Download and run the installer from http://www.macports.org/install.php
Make sure that

/opt/local/bin

is in your path before

/usr/bin

by running

$ echo $PATH

If you don't see /opt/local/bin, edit

$HOME/.bash_profile

and add the line

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:$PATH

after any other PATH-related lines. To verify that your path is now correct, open a new terminal and run

echo $PATH

again.

Get the following packages from port:
$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 sudo port install gmake libsdl git-core gnupg
If using Mac OS 10.4, also install:
$ POSIXLY_CORRECT=1 sudo port install bison
Upgrade GNU make to 3.81 or later by running the following command. (Mac OS doesn't come with a recent enough version.)
$ sudo ln -s gmake /opt/local/bin/make
Set an appropriate per-process file descriptor limit. To do this, add the following lines to your .bash_profile file:
# set the number of open files to be 1024
$ ulimit -S -n 1024
Note that this may not be necessary; on some systems, the output of "ulimit -S" will show "unlimited". In this case, there is no need to set the limit to 1024.

Installing Repo

Repo is a tool that makes it easier to work with Git in the context of Android. For more information about Repo, see Using Repo and Git .

To install, initialize, and configure Repo, follow these steps:

Make sure you have a~/bindirectory in your home directory, and check to be sure that this bin directory is in your path:
$ cd ~
$ mkdir bin
$ echo $PATH
Download thereposcript and make sure it is executable:
$ curl http://android.git.kernel.org/repo >~/bin/repo $ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Initializing a Repo client

Create an empty directory to hold your working files:
$ mkdir mydroid
$ cd mydroid
Run "repo init" to bring down the latest version of Repo with all its most recent bug fixes. You must specify a URL for the manifest:
$ repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git If you would like to check out a branch other than "master", specify it with -b, like:
$ repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git -b cupcake

When prompted, configure Repo with your real name and email address. If you plan to submit code, use an email address that is associated with a Google account .
A successful initialization will end with a message such as
repo initialized in /mydroid
Your client directory should now contain a.repodirectory where files such as the manifest will be kept.
What will my name and email be used for?
To use the Gerrit code-review tool, you will need an email address that is connected with a registered Google account (which does not have to be a Gmail address). Make sure this is a live address at which you can receive messages . The real name that you provide here will show up in attributions for your code submissions. What is a manifest file?

The Android source files are divided among a number of different repositories. A manifest file contains a mapping of where the files from these repositories will be placed within your working directory w hen you synchronize your files.

Getting the files

To pull down files to your working directory from the repositories as specified in the default manifest, run
$ repo sync

For more about "repo sync" and other Repo commands, see Using Repo and Git .
The Android source files will be located in your working directory under their project names.

Verifying Git Tags

Load the following public key into your GnuPG key database.The key is used to sign annotated tags that represent releases.
$ gpg --import
then paste the key(s) below, and press Control-D to end the input and process the keys. After importing the keys, you can verify any tag with
$ git tag -v tagname
key 9AB10E78: "The Android Open Source Projectinitial-contribution@android.com"

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

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Building the code

To build the files, run make from within your working directory:

$ cd ~/mydroid

$ source build/envsetup.sh

$ lunch

$ make

If your build fails, complaining about a missing "run-java-tool", try setting the ANDROID_JAVA_HOME env var to $JAVA_HOME before making. E.g.,

$ export ANDROID_JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_HOME

Using an IDE

Using Eclipse for Android platform development

Troubleshooting

ImportError: No module na med readline

Mac users getting this should install Python 2.5.2.

Linux users that installed Python from source, make sure the dependencies for libreadline are installed, and rebuild Python.