Android has caused one of the greatest revolutions of our time. Being present on smartphones, TV, tables, watches, embedded boards, it can be considered ubiquitous. Its open source nature gives companies, expert users, and hackers the opportunity to learn from, improve, and customize the system, creating a tailored version of the most popular mobile operating system.
This book is a journey from the origins of the Android project to what's in the future, walking through all the phases needed to build a custom Android system from source and from binary images.
Chapter 1, Understanding the Architecture, explains the Android hardware and software architecture, the Android Compatibility Definition Document, the Android Compatibility Test Suite, and the Android Runtime.
Chapter 2, Obtaining the Source Code – Structure and Philosophy, explains the Android Open Source Project.
Chapter 3, Set up and Build – the Emulator Way, teaches how to set up the build environment and build a system image for the Android Emulator.
Chapter 4, Moving to Real-World Hardware, tells you about how to build a real device and how to flash the system image.
Chapter 5, Customizing Kernel and Boot Sequence, dives into kernel and boot sequence customization, in order to tailor the perfect system.
Chapter 6, "Cooking" Your First ROM, discusses about custom recovery images, root privileges, and Android Kitchen.
Chapter 7, Tailoring Your Personal Android System, discusses hacking the Android framework, adding apps, and optimizing the system.
Chapter 8, Beyond the Smartphone, discusses what's next, what the Android possibilities are once you step away from the smartphone world.
More about Android N Programming: In this chapter, you will find some more information about Android N Programming at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MoreaboutAndroidNProgramming.pdf.
All you need for the journey is a personal computer, Ubuntu Linux or OS X will do, an Internet connection, and your passion!
If you are a programmer or embedded systems hacker who wants to customize, build, and deploy your own Android version, then this book is definitely for you.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
LOCAL_SRC_FILES:=\
netcat.c \
atomicio.cAny command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ git add art_new_feature $ git commit -m "Add new awesome feature to ART"
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."
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