Huawei Vodafone Smart (u8160)

Cyanogenmod ROM Huawei Vodafone Smart (u8160)

Cyanogenmod ROM Huawei Vodafone Smart (u8160)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3 (Gingerbread))

Note: Support Status

This device does not support the latest official release of CyanogenMod. This may be due to hardware limitations or simply because development is ongoing. The most recent version supported is based on the gingerbread branch of CyanogenMod.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_huawei_u8160
Vodafone Smart Specifications
Codename: u8160
Vendor: Huawei
Type: phone
Platform: Qualcomm MSM7225
CPU: 528 MHz single-core ARM 11
RAM: 256MB
Screen size: 71 mm (2.8 in)
Resolution: 240×320
Screen density: 143 ppi
Screen type: TFT LCD
CM supported: 7
Latest CM version: gingerbread

How To Build CyanogenMod For Huawei Vodafone Smart (u8160)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Vodafone Smart, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Vodafone Smart
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Vodafone Smart (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b gingerbread

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt Rom Manager

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cyanogen

then enter:

$ ./get-rommanager

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause the Rom Manager apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:
$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch

You should see a list of devices, including something like cm_u8160-userdebug. Select it by typing its number. It is possible that lunch does not display your device. In that case try

$ lunch cm_u8160-userdebug

or

$ lunch full_u8160-userdebug

If all goes well, you should see that u8160-specific directories are downloaded automatically.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Vodafone Smart is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/huawei/u8160 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/huawei/u8160 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/huawei directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/huawei directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilt/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch u8160

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make u8160 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/u8160/cm_u8160-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-u8160.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-u8160.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Huawei IDEOS (u8150)

Cyanogenmod ROM Huawei IDEOS (u8150)

Cyanogenmod ROM Huawei IDEOS (u8150)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3 (Gingerbread))

Note: Support Status

This device does not support the latest official release of CyanogenMod. This may be due to hardware limitations or simply because development is ongoing. The most recent version supported is based on the gingerbread branch of CyanogenMod.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_huawei_u8150
IDEOS Specifications
Codename: u8150
Also known as: IDEOS
Vendor: Huawei
Release date: 2010 September (INT)
Type: phone
GSM freq: Quad-band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE
Dual-band 900 2100 MHz HSPA/WCDMA
Platform: Qualcomm MSM7225
CPU: 528 MHz single-core 528 MHz Qualcomm
RAM: 256MB
Weight: 102 g (3.6 oz)
Dimensions: 104 mm (4.1 in) (h)
55 mm (2.17 in) (w)
14 mm (0.551 in) (d)
Screen size: 71 mm (2.8 in)
Resolution: 480×320
Internal storage: 512MB
SD Card: up to 32GB
Bluetooth: 2.1+A2DP
Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g
Main camera: 3.2MP
Power: 1200 mAh internal rechargeable removable lithium-ion battery
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen, volume controls, 3-axis accelerometer, digital compass
CM supported: 7
Latest CM version: gingerbread

How To Build CyanogenMod For Huawei IDEOS (u8150)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock IDEOS, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A IDEOS
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the IDEOS (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b gingerbread

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt Rom Manager

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cyanogen

then enter:

$ ./get-rommanager

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause the Rom Manager apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:
$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch

You should see a list of devices, including something like cm_u8150-userdebug. Select it by typing its number. It is possible that lunch does not display your device. In that case try

$ lunch cm_u8150-userdebug

or

$ lunch full_u8150-userdebug

If all goes well, you should see that u8150-specific directories are downloaded automatically.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your IDEOS is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/huawei/u8150 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/huawei/u8150 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/huawei directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/huawei directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilt/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch u8150

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make u8150 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/u8150/cm_u8150-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-u8150.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-u8150.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Samsung Galaxy S3 GSM/LTE (i9305)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 GSM/LTE (i9305)

Cyanogenmod ROM Samsung Galaxy S3 GSM/LTE (i9305)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 13.0 (Android 6.0/6.0.1 (Marshmallow))

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Power off device and hold Home & Volume Up & Power.
  • Download: Power off device and hold Home & Volume Down & Power.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_samsung_i9305
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_samsung_smdk4412
Galaxy S III (LTE / International) Specifications
Codename: i9305
Vendor: Samsung
Release date: October 2012
Type: phone
GSM freq: 850 900 1800 1900 2100 MHz UMTS/HSPA+
LTE freq: 800 2600
Platform: Samsung Exynos 4412
CPU: 1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex A9
GPU: Mali-400
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 135 g (4.7 oz)
Dimensions: 137 mm (5.4 in) (h)
71 mm (2.8 in) (w)
8.6 mm (0.339 in) (d)
Screen size: 122 mm (4.8 in)
Resolution: 1280×720
Screen density: 320 ppi
Screen type: Super AMOLED
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 4.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP, flash: yes, LED
Secondary camera: 1.9MP
Peripherals: accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, digital compass, GPS, microphone, NFC
CM supported: 10.1, 10.2, 11, 13

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Samsung Galaxy S III (LTE / International) (i9305)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Installing a custom recovery

Samsung devices come with a unique boot mode called Download Mode which is very similar to Fastboot Mode on some devices with unlocked bootloaders. Heimdall is a cross-platform, open source tool for interfacing with Download Mode on Samsung devices. The preferred method of installing a custom recovery is through this boot mode. Rooting the stock firmware is neither recommended nor necessary.

  1. Download and install the Heimdall Suite
    • Windows: Extract the Heimdall suite and take note of the directory holding heimdall.exe. You can verify Heimdall is working by opening a command prompt in this directory and typing heimdall version. If you receive an error, be sure that you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable Package (x86/32bit) installed on your computer.
    • Linux: Pick the appropriate installation package based on your distribution. The -frontend packages are not required for this guide. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Mac: Install the dmg package. After installation, heimdall should be available from the terminal; type heimdall version to verify installation succeeded.
    • Building from source: The source code for the Heimdall Suite is available on Github. For more details about how to compile the Heimdall Suite, please refer to the README file on Github under the relevant operating system directory. You can also refer to the Install and compile Heimdall instructions on this wiki.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit TWRP site to check for the latest version of recovery for your device (if your device can be found there). For general info about recoveries click here.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: aaa62fed2af38a25b55afab3a291a530
  3. Power off the Galaxy S III (LTE / International) and connect the USB adapter to the computer but not to the Galaxy S III (LTE / International), yet.
  4. Boot the Galaxy S III (LTE / International) into download mode. Power off device and hold Home & Volume Down & Power. Accept the disclaimer on the device. Then, insert the USB cable into the device.
  5. Windows (only) driver installation – Skip this step if you are using Linux or Mac
    A more complete set of the following instructions can be found in the Zadig User Guide.
    1. Run zadig.exe from the Drivers folder of the Heimdall Suite.
    2. Choose Options » List All Devices from the menu.
    3. Select Samsung USB Composite Device or MSM8x60 or Gadget Serial or Device Name from the drop down menu. (If nothing relevant appears, try uninstalling any Samsung related Windows software, like Samsung Windows drivers and/or Kies).
    4. Click Replace Driver (having selecting “Install Driver” from the drop down list built into the button).
    5. If you are prompted with a warning that the installer is unable to verify the publisher of the driver, select Install this driver anyway. You may receive two more prompts about security. Select the options that allow you to carry on.
  6. At this point, familiarize yourself with the Flashing with heimdall notes below so that you are prepared for any strange behaviour if it occurs.
  7. On the computer, open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) in the directory where the recovery image is located and type:
    heimdall flash --RECOVERY recovery.img --no-reboot
    Tip: The file may not be named identically to what’s in this command. If the file is wrapped in a zip or tar file, extract the file first, because heimdall isn’t going to do it for you.
  8. A blue transfer bar will appear on the device showing the recovery being transferred.
  9. Unplug the USB cable from your device.
    • NOTE: Be sure to reboot into recovery immediately after having installed the custom recovery. Otherwise the custom recovery will be overwritten and the device will reboot (appearing as though your custom recovery failed to install).
  10. Manually reboot the phone into recovery mode by performing the following. Power off device and hold Home & Volume Up & Power.
  11. The Galaxy S III (LTE / International) now has a custom recovery installed. Continue to the next section.

Note: Flashing with heimdall

  • In Windows 7 UAC (User Account Control) may need switching off. Once Heimdall is finished it can be re-enabled.
  • Protocol initialization can fail if the device is connected via a USB hub – connect the USB cable directly to the PC
  • It may be necessary to run the heimdall flash command as root in Linux or Mac OS X: sudo heimdall flash [...]. Typical symptoms of this are:
    • a blue bar doesn’t show up after the process has finished
    • Failed to confirm end of file transfer sequence!
  • It may be necessary to capitalize the name of the partition on some devices. Try --KERNEL instead of --kernel and/or --recovery instead of --RECOVERY.
  • If on Linux 64bit you get “unable to execute ./heimdall: No such file or directory”, try the 32bit version and make sure to run it with sudo: reference.
  • On Mac OS X you may see this message: “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!”. If so, you need to disable the default USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDC;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMControl;
    sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBCDCACMData;
    If you have installed Samsung Kies, you may further need to unload those USB drivers with the following commands:
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungComposite;
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMData
    sudo kextunload -b com.devguru.driver.SamsungACMControl
  • Using Heimdall version 1.4.0 (the latest version available for download on the Glass Echidna website) you may see this message or one similar to it:
    Error: Failed to confirm end of PIT file transfer!
    If you experience this error, follow the instructions for compiling Heimdall from source to get the latest version on GitHub with the issue patched.

Helpful Tip

  • The stock ROM may overwrite your custom recovery on boot. To prevent this, boot immediately into recovery after leaving Download Mode instead of letting the ROM boot up normally. If your recovery is overwritten, simply redo the steps you followed above and catch it before it boots next time.
  • Note for upgrades from gingerbread to jellybean remember the recovery is changed. This means once you install do NOT restore to old-gingerbread-stock ROM from cwm-recovery.
  • To upgrade from stock/CM7/CM9/CM10.1.2/CM10.1.3 to CM10.2, you must first boot into recovery and wipe data, cache, and dalvik cache (factory reset). Due to the new partition layout in CM10.2, failing to perform these steps will result in a bootloop. See here for details; more about repartitioning here. If you missed this step before installing, boot to recovery and factory reset, then reinstall CM10.2.
  • Some users have reported connection errors if the device is connected to a USB hub. If you experience such errors it is recommended that you try connecting your device to a USB port on the motherboard.
  • Antivirus software may prevent Heimdall from connecting properly. Disable your antivirus before proceeding.
  • When Heimdall fails to connect, the Download mode may get stuck, making all further attempts fail too. To retry, you may need to restart the Download mode: turn off the phone by holding Power for 5-10 seconds (or by pulling out the battery), then boot into Download mode and run Heimdall again.
  • If Heimdall fails to connect (errors related to initializing the protocol, or transferring data):
    if you just installed the driver, try rebooting your computer and trying again.
    if you still have troubles after reboot, in Zadig try installing the libusbK driver rather than the WinUSB driver.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Power off device and hold Home & Volume Up & Power.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Samsung Galaxy S III (LTE / International) (i9305)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Galaxy S III (LTE / International), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Galaxy S III (LTE / International)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Galaxy S III (LTE / International) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast i9305

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast i9305

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Galaxy S III (LTE / International) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/samsung/i9305 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/samsung/i9305 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/samsung directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch i9305

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make i9305 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/i9305/cm_i9305-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-i9305.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-i9305.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

LG Optimus 4X HD (p880)

Cyanogenmod ROM LG Optimus 4X HD (P880)

Cyanogenmod ROM LG Optimus 4X HD (p880)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 11 (Android 4.4-4.4.4 (KitKat))

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Volume Up & Power

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_lge_p880
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/lge-kernel-p880
Optimus 4X HD Specifications
Codename: p880
Vendor: LG
Release date: 2012 June
Type: phone
GSM freq: 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GSM
850 900 1900 2100 MHz HSDPA
Platform: NVIDIA Tegra 3
CPU: 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex A9
GPU: ULP GeForce
RAM: 1GB
Weight: 133 g (4.69 oz)
Dimensions: 132.4 mm (5.21 in) (h)
68.1 mm (2.68 in) (w)
8.9 mm (0.35 in) (d)
Screen size: 119 mm (4.7 in)
Resolution: 720×1280
Screen density: 312 ppi
Screen type: True HD-IPS LCD
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: up to 64GB
Bluetooth: 4.0 with A2DP, LE
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP, flash: LED
Secondary camera: 1.3MP
Power: Li-Ion 2150 mAh
Peripherals: accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, A-GPS
CM supported: 10.1, 10.2, 11

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

This guide will walk you through the process of taking the Optimus 4X HD from stock to having a custom recovery image and the ability to flash the latest version of CyanogenMod.

Unlocking the device

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data and will probably void warranty.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into bootloader unlock mode:
    adb reboot oem-unlock
  6. A disclaimer will display on the device that must be accepted. As it says, press volume up to unlock.
  7. This is where it will factory reset, when it says Done... Now Ready! the device is officially bootloader unlocked.
  8. Now Pull the battery and re-insert it.
  9. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

  1. You can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit twrp.me to obtain the latest version of TeamWin Recovery Project for your device.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: 02d978e8978d5e8066f3954df7648fc3
  2. Connect the Optimus 4X HD to the computer via USB.
  3. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  4. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  5. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  6. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  7. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
  3. Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  4. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  5. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Volume Up & Power
  6. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  7. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  8. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  9. Select Install (if you’re running Cyanogen recovery this is Apply Update).
  10. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  11. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  12. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  13. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

How To Build CyanogenMod For LG Optimus 4X HD (p880)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Optimus 4X HD, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Optimus 4X HD
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Optimus 4X HD (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast p880

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast p880

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Optimus 4X HD is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/lge/p880 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/lge/p880 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/lge directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/lge directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch p880

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make p880 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/p880/cm_p880-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-p880.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-p880.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Categories LG

Motorola RAZR HD (xt925)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola RAZR HD (GSM) (xt925, vanquish_u)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola RAZR HD (GSM) (vanquish_u) (xt925)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 12.1 (Android 5.1 (Lollipop))

Notes

Note:

Your device must be bootloader unlocked.
For CM 11.0, the device builds have been unified. Get the latest CM 11.0 build for KitKat bootloader updated xt925 here and for xt925 still on JellyBean bootloader here.
For CM 12.0 and newer, the builds were de-unified again. The builds for KitKat updated bootloader xt925 are under the usual xt925 builds. The builds for xt925 that is still on JellyBean bootloader are here.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Volume Down & Power.
  • Bootloader: Volume Up & Volume Down & Power. Use Volume Down to scroll and Volume Up to select.
  • Fastboot: Volume Up & Volume Down & Power. Use Volume Down to scroll and Volume Up to select.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_xt925
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_motorola_msm8960-common
RAZR HD (GSM) Specifications
Codename: xt925
Also known as: vanquish_u
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2012 September
Type: phone
GSM freq: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
LTE freq: LTE 800 / 1800 / 2600
LTE 700 / 800 / 1700 / 1800 / 2600
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Cortex A9 (Krait)
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 1GB
Weight: 146 g (5.15 oz)
Dimensions: 131.9 x 67.9 x 8.4 mm (5.19 x 2.67 x 0.33 in)
Screen size: 119 mm (4.7 in)
Resolution: 720 x 1280 pixels
Screen density: ~312 ppi
Screen type: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
Internal storage: 16 GB (12 GB user available)
SD Card: microSD, up to 32 GB
Bluetooth: Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR
Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Main camera: 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, 1080p@30fps, flash: LED flash
Secondary camera: Yes, 1.3 MP
Power: Non-removable Li-Po 2500/2530 mAh battery (Up to 16h-2G / Up to 22h-3G)
Peripherals: Accelerometer, proximity, compass
CM supported: 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12, 12.1

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Motorola RAZR HD (GSM) (xt925)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

Note:

Your device must be bootloader unlocked.
For CM 11.0, the device builds have been unified. Get the latest CM 11.0 build for KitKat bootloader updated xt925 here and for xt925 still on JellyBean bootloader here.
For CM 12.0 and newer, the builds were de-unified again. The builds for KitKat updated bootloader xt925 are under the usual xt925 builds. The builds for xt925 that is still on JellyBean bootloader are here.

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to obtain your bootloader unlock code:
    fastboot oem get_unlock_data
  8. Visit the Motorola Bootloader Unlock website and follow the instructions there to obtain your unlock key and unlock your bootloader.
  9. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked.
  10. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit twrp.me to obtain the latest version of Team Win Recovery Project for your device.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: 047f9294e72d813526437e9464372c46
  3. Connect the RAZR HD (GSM) to the computer via USB.
  4. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  5. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  7. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  8. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation. Boot to recovery instructions: Volume Down & Power.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Volume Down & Power.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola RAZR HD (GSM) (xt925)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock RAZR HD (GSM), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A RAZR HD (GSM)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the RAZR HD (GSM) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Unlocking your RAZR HD (GSM)

What does “unlocking” mean?

Note:

If you’ve already installed CyanogenMod or another ROM on your RAZR HD (GSM), your device is already unlocked. Assuming you also have adb and fastboot installed on your computer, you can skip this whole section and proceed to the HOW TO BUILD section below.

The first step in putting any custom operating system on your RAZR HD (GSM) is to unlock the bootloader. A bootloader is the very first program that runs when you turn on your device. The bootloader initializes some hardware and then loads the kernel and ramdisk, and gets the boot process going. If the bootloader is in locked mode, it will ensure that only the stock operating system can run. Since you will be installing your own operating system, you need to turn this off. Luckily, Google and motorola make it easy.

Note: A Warning About Unlocking

THE PROCESS OF UNLOCKING THE BOOTLOADER WILL ERASE ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA FROM THE DEVICE.

Okay. I’m in. What do I need to do this?

To unlock your bootloader, you’ll first need a program on your computer called fastboot. One way to get fastboot is to download and install the Android SDK (Software Developer Kit) from Google. The SDK is used by app developers when they’re writing programs for Android, and who knows, you may want to write apps someday. But the SDK also contains two great tools that are useful even to non-developers. They are:

  • adbAndroid Debug Bridge – this is a program that lets your computer “talk” to your RAZR HD (GSM) while the device is running. Among the many things you can do with adb– you can push files from your computer to the device or pull files from the device to your computer, you can get a running real-time log of Android activity (which is very useful for debugging or having others help you debug), you can create an interactive “shell” session (similar to Linux or OS X) to type commands to your device, and much more.

  • fastboot – fastboot works a little bit like adb, except it’s often used at a much earlier point in the boot process, even before Android or any operating system loads. You can put your RAZR HD (GSM) into a “fastboot” mode, whereby, if you are connected via USB cable, you can copy entire partitions from your computer (usually in the form of an image file, such as boot.img or recovery.img) over to the device, wiping over whatever happened to be there. Fastboot is able to do more than that, however. It’s also used to send special commands to the device to do things such as unlock your bootloader.

How do I do the actual unlocking?

So this should be a one time thing…

Install the Android SDK

To unlock your RAZR HD (GSM), you will need fastboot installed. Go ahead and download the SDK, per the steps on Google’s web page. Then install it by following the specific instructions for your computer.

Note:

Google’s instructions may be out of date for 12.04. The Sun JDK isn’t available anymore as a dpkg AND they say Eclipse 3.6 isn’t available as a package. Well, 3.7.X is now available. Doing a “$ sudo apt-get install eclipse” will now install the proper Eclipse and JDK (OpenJDK 6).

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to unlock the bootloader:
    fastboot oem get_unlock_data
  8. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked.
  9. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Troubleshooting

If you have issues with fastboot or adb not being found, make sure that the Android SDK folder /platform-tools, which contains the adb and fastboot files, are in the path of execution for commands typed at the terminal. Usually typing something like

# PATH=$PATH:/your/specific/path/to/android/sdk/platform-tools/

will work for that terminal session.

Note:

The above command requires a bash-like shell. If you’re running a linux distribution which uses a shell such as csh or tcsh, first run /bin/bash to start a bash shell. See http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-find-out-what-shell-im-using.html or google for more help on that. You will need bash later as well, when using the “. build/envsetup.sh” command.

Note: Linux Mint users

If you have problems with adb (“file not found”) and you’re using 64-bit linux (I don’t know much about Mint, so maybe it’s all 64-bit?) try doing this to see if adb works better:

$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

You’ll be using fastboot again to install a custom recovery.

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast xt925

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast xt925

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your RAZR HD (GSM) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/xt925 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/xt925 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch xt925

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make xt925 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/xt925/cm_xt925-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-xt925.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  1. Connect the RAZR HD (GSM) to the computer via USB.
  2. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  3. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  4. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  5. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  6. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-xt925.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Motorola RAZR/RAZR MAXX (umts_spyder)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) (umts_spyder)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) (umts_spyder)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 13.0 (Android 6.0/6.0.1 (Marshmallow))

Notes

This is a KEXEC build and must be installed in SafeStrap (builds older than 9/1/2013 must be installed on rom-slot1). CM-12.0 requires at least Safestrap v3.75.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Power and at SafeStrap splash screen press Menu key within 10 seconds
  • Bootloader: Vol Up & Vol Down & Power
  • Fastboot: Vol Down & Power

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_umts_spyder
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_motorola_omap4-common
RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) Specifications
Codename: umts_spyder
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2011 November 11
Type: phone
GSM freq: 850/900/1800/1900 HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100
Platform: TI OMAP4430
CPU: 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9
GPU: PowerVR SGX540
RAM: 1GB
Weight: 127 g (4.48 oz)
Dimensions: 130.7 x 68.9 x 7.1 mm (5.15 x 2.71 x 0.28 in)
Screen size: 109 mm (4.3 in)
Resolution: 540 x 960
Screen density: 256 ppi
Screen type: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
Internal storage: 16GB
SD Card: microSD, up to 32 GB
Bluetooth: v4.0 with LE+EDR
Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8MP, flash: LED
Secondary camera: 1.3MP
Power: 1780 mAh/3300 mAh (MAXX)
Peripherals: Accelerometer, proximity, compass, GPS
CM supported: 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12, 12.1, 13

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Motorola RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) (umts_spyder)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

This is a KEXEC build and must be installed in SafeStrap (builds older than 9/1/2013 must be installed on rom-slot1). CM-12.0 requires at least Safestrap v3.75.

Gaining Root Access with Razr’s Edge (Windows Only)

  1. Download Razr’s Edge (Credit to djrbliss)
  2. Download and install the Motorola device drivers.
  3. Unzip Razr’s Edge to a folder on your computer.
  4. Enable USB debugging on the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM): Settings > Developer Options and check the Android debugging box.
  5. Connect the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) to the computer via USB.
  6. On the computer, double click the run.bat file:
  7. Allow the exploit to finish, the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) may reboot several times.
  8. The RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) is now rooted.

Installing SafeStrap Recovery

  1. Download the SafeStrap APK for RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM): Download
    • md5: 7e0a0e04f59279215e9e1949e55be805
  2. Place the downloaded APK alongside adb on your computer.
  3. Enable installation from unknown sources on your RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM): Settings > Security and check the Unknown sources box.
  4. Open a terminal on your computer and navigate to the adb executable and run the following: adb install YOURAPK.apk
  5. If you see [SUCCESS] in the terminal, continue on.
    NOTE: If you see [FAILED], please go back and ensure you’ve followed the instructions above to the letter.
  6. Run the SafeStrap app on the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM).
  7. Once requested, permanently grant the application Superuser access.
  8. Click the button labeled Install Recovery.
  9. Once complete, reboot the device.
  10. When the SafeStrap splash screen appears, hit the Menu button on your RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM).
  11. Click the button labeled Boot Options.
  12. Activate romslot-1 and follow the instructions on the device.
  13. We will be updating SafeStrap to use all ROM slots for Kexec soon.
  14. Follow the instructions below for installing CyanogenMod from recovery.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Power and at SafeStrap splash screen press Menu key within 10 seconds
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) (umts_spyder)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM), unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM)
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast umts_spyder

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast umts_spyder

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM) is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/umts_spyder directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/umts_spyder if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch umts_spyder

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make umts_spyder should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/umts_spyder/cm_umts_spyder-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-umts_spyder.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Installing SafeStrap Recovery

  1. Download the SafeStrap APK for RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM): [{{{install_file}}} Download]
    • md5: {{{install_md5sum}}}
  2. Place the downloaded APK alongside adb on your computer.
  3. Enable installation from unknown sources on your RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM): Settings > Security and check the Unknown sources box.
  4. Open a terminal on your computer and navigate to the adb executable and run the following: adb install YOURAPK.apk
  5. If you see [SUCCESS] in the terminal, continue on.
    NOTE: If you see [FAILED], please go back and ensure you’ve followed the instructions above to the letter.
  6. Run the SafeStrap app on the RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM).
  7. Once requested, permanently grant the application Superuser access.
  8. Click the button labeled Install Recovery.
  9. Once complete, reboot the device.
  10. When the SafeStrap splash screen appears, hit the Menu button on your RAZR/RAZR MAXX (GSM).
  11. Click the button labeled Boot Options.
  12. Activate romslot-1 and follow the instructions on the device.
  13. We will be updating SafeStrap to use all ROM slots for Kexec soon.
  14. Follow the instructions below for installing CyanogenMod from recovery.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-umts_spyder.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Motorola Photon Q (xt897)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Photon Q (xt897 / asanti_c)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Photon Q (asanti_c) (xt897)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 13.0 (Android 6.0/6.0.1 (Marshmallow))

Notes

Note:

For CM 11.0, the builds have been unified. Get the latest CM 11.0 builds for xt897 here.
For CM 12.0 and newer, builds were de-unified again and can be found under the usual xt897 device builds.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: With the device powered down, hold the Volume Up and Power buttons until recovery appears, then release the buttons.
  • Bootloader: With the device powered down, hold the Volume Down and Power buttons until the bootloader appears, then release the buttons.
  • Fastboot: With the device powered down, hold the Volume Down and Power buttons until the bootloader appears, then release the buttons.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_xt897
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_motorola_msm8960-common
Photon Q Specifications
Codename: xt897
Also known as: asanti_c
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2012 August
Type: phone (slider)
GSM freq: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
CDMA freq: CDMA 800 / 1900, EV-DO Rev.A
LTE freq: LTE 1900
Platform: Qualcomm MSM8960
CPU: 1.5 GHz dual-core Cortex A9 (Krait)
GPU: Adreno 225
RAM: 1GB
Weight: 170 g (6 oz)
Dimensions: 126 x 66 x 13.7 mm (4.98 x 2.6 x 0.54 in)
Screen size: 109 mm (4.3 in)
Resolution: 540 x 960 pixels
Screen density: ~256 ppi
Screen type: TFT capacitive touchscreen
Internal storage: 8 GB (4.5 GB user available)
SD Card: microSD, up to 32 GB
Bluetooth: Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR
Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
Main camera: 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, 1080p@30fps, flash: LED flash
Secondary camera: Yes, 1.3 MP
Power: Non-removable Li-Ion 1785 mAh battery
Peripherals: Accelerometer, proximity, compass
CM supported: 10.1, 10.2, 11, 12, 12.1, 13

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Motorola Photon Q (xt897)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

Note:

For CM 11.0, the builds have been unified. Get the latest CM 11.0 builds for xt897 here.
For CM 12.0 and newer, builds were de-unified again and can be found under the usual xt897 device builds.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit twrp.me to obtain the latest version of Team Win Recovery Project for your device.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: 396b45019ac33604b1a3b28272a933c5
  3. Connect the Photon Q to the computer via USB.
  4. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  5. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  7. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  8. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation. Boot to recovery instructions: With the device powered down, hold the Volume Up and Power buttons until recovery appears, then release the buttons.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • With the device powered down, hold the Volume Up and Power buttons until recovery appears, then release the buttons.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola Photon Q (xt897)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Photon Q, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Photon Q
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Photon Q (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast xt897

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast xt897

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Photon Q is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/xt897 directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/xt897 if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch xt897

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make xt897 should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/xt897/cm_xt897-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-xt897.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  1. Connect the Photon Q to the computer via USB.
  2. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  3. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  4. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  5. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  6. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-xt897.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Motorola Photon 4G (sunfire)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Photon 4G (sunfire) (MB855)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Photon 4G (sunfire) (MB855)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3 (Gingerbread))

Note: Support Status

This device does not support the latest official release of CyanogenMod. This may be due to hardware limitations or simply because development is ongoing. The most recent version supported is based on the gingerbread branch of CyanogenMod.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_sunfire
Photon 4G Specifications
Codename: sunfire
Also known as: MB855
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2011 July
Type: phone
GSM freq: GSM850, GSM900, UMTS850 (B5), UMTS1900 (B2), UMTS2100 (B1)
CDMA freq: CDMA800 (BC0), CDMA1900 (BC14)
Platform: NVIDIA Tegra 2 250 AP20H
CPU: 1 GHz dual-core Cortex A9
GPU: 300MHz NVIDIA GeForce ULP GPU
RAM: 1GB
Weight: 158 grams
Dimensions: 66.9 x 126.9 x 12.2 mm
Screen size: 109 mm (4.3 in)
Resolution: 540 x 960
Internal storage: 15GB
SD Card: up to 32GB
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n
Main camera: 8 MP Dual-LED flash
Secondary camera: 0.3MP
Power: 1700 mAh
CM supported: 7
Latest CM version: gingerbread

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola Photon 4G (sunfire)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Photon 4G, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Photon 4G
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Photon 4G (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b gingerbread

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt Rom Manager

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cyanogen

then enter:

$ ./get-rommanager

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause the Rom Manager apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:
$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch

You should see a list of devices, including something like cm_sunfire-userdebug. Select it by typing its number. It is possible that lunch does not display your device. In that case try

$ lunch cm_sunfire-userdebug

or

$ lunch full_sunfire-userdebug

If all goes well, you should see that sunfire-specific directories are downloaded automatically.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Photon 4G is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/sunfire directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/sunfire if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilt/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch sunfire

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make sunfire should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/sunfire/cm_sunfire-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-sunfire.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-sunfire.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Motorola Droid (sholes)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Droid (Sholes)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Droid (sholes)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3 (Gingerbread))

Note: Support Status

This device does not support the latest official release of CyanogenMod. This may be due to hardware limitations or simply because development is ongoing. The most recent version supported is based on the gingerbread branch of CyanogenMod.

Notes

This guide does NOT apply to the Milestone.

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold X on the keyboard and Power
  • Bootloader: Hold Up on the D-PAD and Power

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_sholes
Droid Specifications
Codename: sholes
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2009 November 6 (USA)
Carrier: Verizon Wireless
Type: phone (slider)
CDMA freq: Dual-band CDMA2000/EVDO Rev. A 800/1900 MHz
Platform: TI OMAP3430
CPU: 600 MHz single-core Cortex A8
RAM: 256MB
Screen size: 94 mm (3.7 in)
Resolution: 480×854
Screen density: 265 ppi
Screen type: TFT LCD
Internal storage: 512MB; 256MB user accessible
SD Card: up to 32GB
Bluetooth: 2.1 + EDR
Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g
Main camera: 5MP w/ dual LED
Power: 1400 mAh internal rechargeable removable lithium-ion battery
Peripherals: capacitive touchscreen display (multitouch), proximity and ambient light sensors, QWERTY keyboard, 3-axis accelerometer, digital compass, A-GPS
CM supported: 7
Latest CM version: gingerbread

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Install a recovery

Installing ClockworkMod Recovery with RSD Lite (Windows)

NOTE: This method works best on Windows XP. If you are having problems on Win7 or Vista, give it a try it on XP.
  1. Download RSD Lite, the Motorola Drivers & the ClockworkMod Recovery .sbf file:
    • RSD Lite 5.7: Download
      md5: feb9a71470ee539e074bf420a2e4d8bd
    • Motorola 5.5.0 device drivers: Download
    • ClockworkMod Recovery: Download
      md5: ed3cf2e8dedf6fbbb90b34c318546d9e
  2. Install RSD Lite.
  3. Once RSD Lite is installed, install the Motorola device drivers.
  4. Plug in the Motorola Droid to the computer via USB cable.
  5. Turn the Motorola Droid off while it is plugged in.
  6. Turn on the Motorola Droid by holding down Power and Up on the D-pad on the device.
  7. Open the RSD Lite program by right clicking it and selecting Run As Administrator.
  8. Click on the “…” button next to the filename box and select the .sbf file.
  9. Once it is selected, hit Start and wait for it to finish flashing the device.
  10. Watch for “rebooting the device” on the device and press Up on the d-pad before the device boots to “catch the boot” and come right back into the bootloader. “Rebooting the device” appears for a very short period of time; you’ll have to be quick.
  11. Close RSD Lite & disconnect the Motorola Droid. The ClockworkMod Recovery should now be installed on the Motorola Droid.

Installing ClockworkMod Recovery with sbf_flash (Linux & OS X)

  1. Download sbf_flash & the SPRecovery file:
    • sbf_flash: Download
    • SBF: Download
      md5: 252ab1b6f07c72c044cda197da3f1373
    • ClockworkMod Recovery: Download
      md5: f052b778fd7afc788bfc1a3c7ce8b38e
  2. Unzip the sbf_flash zipfile.
  3. Plug in the Motorola Droid to the computer via USB cable.
  4. Turn the Motorola Droid off while it is plugged in.
  5. Turn on the Motorola Droid by holding down Power and Up on the D-pad on the device.
  6. On the computer, open terminal.
  7. Type the following commands:
    chmod +x sbf_flash
    ./sbf_flash -r --recovery recovery-clockwork-3.1.0.2-sholes.img MC1_A855_1282081087_Recovery-Only_SPRecovery_0.99.3b.sbf
  8. Watch the terminal for when it says it is rebooting. You will need to hold down ‘x’ on the keyboard when the Motorola Droid is powering back up. The ClockworkMod Recovery should now be installed on the Motorola Droid.
  9. If you get a triangle warning symbol next to a phone, start over with the step of turning on the Motorola Droid with the Power and Up button held down.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Boot to recovery mode, and connect the phone to your computer through USB.
    • X & Power
  4. In ClockworkMod Recovery, use the physical volume buttons to move up and down. On most devices, the power button is used to confirm a menu selection, but for some devices a physical home key acts as a selector. Some devices have touch enabled ClockworkMod Recovery, in which case you may be able to swipe to, or touch, menu selections.
  5. Optional (Recommended): Select backup and restore to create a backup.
  6. Select wipe data/factory reset.
  7. You have two options for transferring and installing the installation packages. The sideload method is more universal across devices, whereas the push and install method is more commonly used:
    • Sideload method: select install zip > install zip from sideload. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package. The installer does not necessarily display an “Install complete.” message. You can tell the install is complete if there were no fatal error messages and you have regained control over the menu.
    • Push and install method: Open a command prompt (or Terminal on Mac and Linux) and navigate to the directory holding the package(s) you would like to install. On the device, navigate to the mounts and storage menu. If you see /storage/sdcard0 or /sdcard as a mountable volume, go ahead and mount it. If you do not see one of these partitions, then instead mount the /data partition. Take note of which volume you mounted. Now, push the package(s) to your device (also, see tip below):
    – If you mounted /storage/sdcard0, then: adb push update.zip /storage/sdcard0/
    – If you mounted /sdcard or /data, then: adb push update.zip /sdcard/
    where update.zip should be replaced with the package filename. Go back to the main menu and select install zip. Choose to install from the same directory where you pushed the package(s). If you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it.
  8. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select reboot system now. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip – SD card folders

CyanogenMod 10.1 and newer have multi-user support (introduced in Android 4.2). If your device has storage on the /data partition, then Android actually looks in /data/media/0/ for the first user’s /sdcard/ storage. ClockworkMod recovery symlinks /sdcard/ to /data/media/ though. So, if you are pushing files to internal storage in recovery and want them to be visible in Android, you should push them to /sdcard/0/ or /data/media/0/. Here’s the most frequent scenarios:

  1. If you’re coming from a ROM with Android 4.1 or older to CyanogenMod 10 or older: adb push update.zip /sdcard/
  2. If you’re coming from a ROM with Android 4.1 or older to CyanogenMod 10.1 or newer: adb shell "mkdir /sdcard/0/" followed by adb push update.zip /sdcard/0/
  3. If you’re coming from a ROM with Android 4.2 or newer to CyanogenMod 10.1 or newer: adb push update.zip /sdcard/0/

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola Droid (sholes)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Droid, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Droid
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Droid (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b gingerbread

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt Rom Manager

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cyanogen

then enter:

$ ./get-rommanager

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause the Rom Manager apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:
$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch

You should see a list of devices, including something like cm_sholes-userdebug. Select it by typing its number. It is possible that lunch does not display your device. In that case try

$ lunch cm_sholes-userdebug

or

$ lunch full_sholes-userdebug

If all goes well, you should see that sholes-specific directories are downloaded automatically.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Droid is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/sholes directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/sholes if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilt/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch sholes

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make sholes should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/sholes/cm_sholes-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-sholes.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-7-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-sholes.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Motorola Moto X (2013) (ghost)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Moto X (2013) - Droid Maxx Dev Edition (moto_msm8960dt/ghost/obake-maxx)

Cyanogenmod ROM Motorola Moto X (2013) International (ghost)

Quick Info

Download CyanogenMod

Download (nightly build)
CyanogenMod 13.0 (Android 6.0/6.0.1 (Marshmallow))

Notes

This is a unified build for all unlockable variants of the Moto X 2013, and the Droid Maxx Developer Edition

Special boot modes

  • Recovery: Hold Volume Down & Power simultaneously.
  • Bootloader: Hold Volume Up Volume Down & Power simultaneously. On the next screen use Volume Down to scroll to bootloader and then use Volume Up to select.
  • Fastboot: Hold Volume Up Volume Down & Power simultaneously. On the next screen use Volume Down to scroll to bootloader and then use Volume Up to select.

Source code

Device http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_device_motorola_ghost
Kernel http://www.github.com/cyanogenmod/android_kernel_motorola_ghost
Moto X 2013 Specifications
Codename: ghost
Also known as: XT1052, XT1053, XT1055, XT1056, XT1058, XT1060
Vendor: Motorola
Release date: 2013 Aug 23
Carrier: AT&T, T-Mobile, International GSM, Verizon, US Cellular, Sprint
Type: phone
GSM freq: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz GSM, 850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz UMTS
LTE freq: 700 (band 13), 850 (band 5), 1700/2100 (band 4), 1900 (band 2) MHz, LTE, HSDPA+ (4G) 42.2 Mbit/s, HSUPA 5.76 Mbit/s, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS
Platform: Motorola X8 (Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MSM8960AB)
CPU: 1.7 GHz dual-core Krait
GPU: Adreno 320
RAM: 2GB
Weight: 130 g (4.59 oz)
Dimensions: 129.3 mm (5.09 in) x 65.3 mm (2.57 in) x 10.4 mm (0.41 in)
Screen size: 119 mm (4.7 in)
Resolution: 720 x 1280 pixels
Screen density: 316 ppi
Screen type: AMOLED
Internal storage: 16 / 32 GB
SD Card: none
Bluetooth: 4.0, EDR
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a, b, g, n, n 5GHz, ac
Main camera: 10MP, flash: LED
Secondary camera: 2MP
Power: 2200 mAh
Peripherals: Accelerometer, Compass
CM supported: 11, 12, 12.1, 13

How to Install CyanogenMod on the Motorola Moto X 2013 (ghost)

Note: DISCLAIMER

Modifying or replacing your device’s software may void your device’s warranty, lead to data loss, hair loss, financial loss, privacy loss, security breaches, or other damage, and therefore must be done entirely at your own risk. No one affiliated with the CyanogenMod project is responsible for your actions. Good luck.

Important Notes

This is a unified build for all unlockable variants of the Moto X 2013, and the Droid Maxx Developer Edition

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to obtain your bootloader unlock code:
    fastboot oem get_unlock_data
  8. Visit the Motorola Bootloader Unlock website and follow the instructions there to obtain your unlock key and unlock your bootloader.
  9. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked.
  10. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Download recovery — you can directly download a recovery image using the link below, or visit twrp.me to obtain the latest version of Team Win Recovery Project for your device.
    Recovery: Download
    md5: c65f326e29d36632b7e4bacbf2018a34
  3. Connect the Moto X 2013 to the computer via USB.
  4. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  5. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  7. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  8. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation. Boot to recovery instructions: Hold Volume Down & Power simultaneously.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Installing CyanogenMod from recovery

  1. Make sure your computer has working adb.
  2. Download the CyanogenMod build package for your device that you’d like to install to your computer.
    Optional: Download 3rd party applications packages, like Google Apps which are necessary to download apps from Google Play.
  3. Place the CyanogenMod .zip package, as well as any optional .zip packages, on the root of /sdcard:
    • Using adb: adb push filename.zip /sdcard/
    Note: You can copy the .zip packages to your device using any method you are familiar with. The adb method is used here because it is universal across all devices and works in both Android and recovery mode. If you are in recovery mode, you may need to ensure /sdcard (sometimes called Internal Storage) is mounted by checking its status in the Mounts menu. If you have booted regularly, USB debugging must be enabled.
  4. If you are not already in recovery, boot to recovery mode now.
    • Hold Volume Down & Power simultaneously.
  5. In Team Win Recovery Project, select menu choices by tapping on the appropriately labelled button.
  6. Optional (Recommended): Select the Backup button to create a backup.
  7. Select Wipe and then Factory Reset.
  8. Select Install.
  9. Navigate to /sdcard and select the CyanogenMod .zip package.
  10. Follow the on-screen notices to install the package.
  11. Optional: Install any additional packages you wish using the same method (if you are installing multiple packages, install CyanogenMod first and then install any subsequent packages on top of it).
  12. Once installation has finished, return to the main menu and select Reboot, then System. The device will now boot into CyanogenMod.

Helpful Tip

See something wrong on this page? Click here: Report a Site Problem.

How To Build CyanogenMod For Motorola Moto X 2013 (ghost)

Introduction

These instructions will hopefully assist you to start with a stock Moto X 2013, unlock the bootloader (if necessary), and then download the required tools as well as the very latest source code for CyanogenMod (based on Google’s Android operating system). Using these, you can build both CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery image from source code, and then install them both to your device.

It is difficult to say how much experience is necessary to follow these instructions. While this guide is certainly not for the very very very uninitiated, these steps shouldn’t require a PhD in software development either. Some readers will have no difficulty and breeze through the steps easily. Others may struggle over the most basic operation. Because people’s experiences, backgrounds, and intuitions differ, it may be a good idea to read through just to ascertain whether you feel comfortable or are getting over your head.

Remember, you assume all risk of trying this, but you will reap the rewards! It’s pretty satisfying to boot into a fresh operating system you baked at home :) And once you’re an Android-building ninja, there will be no more need to wait for “nightly” builds from anyone. You will have at your fingertips the skills to build a full operating system from code to a running device, whenever you want. Where you go from there– maybe you’ll add a feature, fix a bug, add a translation, or use what you’ve learned to build a new app or port to a new device– or maybe you’ll never build again– it’s all really up to you.

What you’ll need

  • A Moto X 2013
  • A relatively recent computer (Linux, OS X, or Windows) with a reasonable amount of RAM and about 100 GB of free storage (more if you enable ccache or build for multiple devices). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take (aim for 8 GB or more). Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
  • A USB cable compatible with the Moto X 2013 (typically micro USB, but older devices may use mini USB or have a proprietary cable)
  • A decent internet connection & reliable electricity :)
  • Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It would help if you’ve installed custom roms on other devices and are familiar with recovery. It may also be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

If you are not accustomed to using Linux– this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free– just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as Virtualbox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest is recommended.

Note:

You want to use a 64-bit version of Linux. A 32-bit Linux environment will only work if you are building CyanogenMod 6 and older. For CyanogenMod 10.1, if you encounter issues with 64bit host binaries, you can set BUILD_HOST_32bit=1 in your environment. This is generally not needed, though, especially with CyanogenMod 10.2 and newer.

Using a VM allows Linux to run as a guest inside your host computer– a computer in a computer, if you will. If you hate Linux for whatever reason, you can always just uninstall and delete the whole thing. (There are plenty of places to find instructions for setting up Virtualbox with Ubuntu, so I’ll leave it to you to do that.)

So let’s begin!

Unlocking your Moto X 2013

What does “unlocking” mean?

Note:

If you’ve already installed CyanogenMod or another ROM on your Moto X 2013, your device is already unlocked. Assuming you also have adb and fastboot installed on your computer, you can skip this whole section and proceed to the HOW TO BUILD section below.

The first step in putting any custom operating system on your Moto X 2013 is to unlock the bootloader. A bootloader is the very first program that runs when you turn on your device. The bootloader initializes some hardware and then loads the kernel and ramdisk, and gets the boot process going. If the bootloader is in locked mode, it will ensure that only the stock operating system can run. Since you will be installing your own operating system, you need to turn this off. Luckily, Google and motorola make it easy.

Note: A Warning About Unlocking

THE PROCESS OF UNLOCKING THE BOOTLOADER WILL ERASE ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA FROM THE DEVICE.

Okay. I’m in. What do I need to do this?

To unlock your bootloader, you’ll first need a program on your computer called fastboot. One way to get fastboot is to download and install the Android SDK (Software Developer Kit) from Google. The SDK is used by app developers when they’re writing programs for Android, and who knows, you may want to write apps someday. But the SDK also contains two great tools that are useful even to non-developers. They are:

  • adbAndroid Debug Bridge – this is a program that lets your computer “talk” to your Moto X 2013 while the device is running. Among the many things you can do with adb– you can push files from your computer to the device or pull files from the device to your computer, you can get a running real-time log of Android activity (which is very useful for debugging or having others help you debug), you can create an interactive “shell” session (similar to Linux or OS X) to type commands to your device, and much more.

  • fastboot – fastboot works a little bit like adb, except it’s often used at a much earlier point in the boot process, even before Android or any operating system loads. You can put your Moto X 2013 into a “fastboot” mode, whereby, if you are connected via USB cable, you can copy entire partitions from your computer (usually in the form of an image file, such as boot.img or recovery.img) over to the device, wiping over whatever happened to be there. Fastboot is able to do more than that, however. It’s also used to send special commands to the device to do things such as unlock your bootloader.

How do I do the actual unlocking?

So this should be a one time thing…

Install the Android SDK

To unlock your Moto X 2013, you will need fastboot installed. Go ahead and download the SDK, per the steps on Google’s web page. Then install it by following the specific instructions for your computer.

Note:

Google’s instructions may be out of date for 12.04. The Sun JDK isn’t available anymore as a dpkg AND they say Eclipse 3.6 isn’t available as a package. Well, 3.7.X is now available. Doing a “$ sudo apt-get install eclipse” will now install the proper Eclipse and JDK (OpenJDK 6).

Unlocking the bootloader

WARNING:

Unlocking the bootloader will automatically wipe all device data.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  2. Enable USB debugging on the device.
  3. Enable OEM unlock in the Developer options settings on the device. (Note: Not all devices have this setting, so continue with next step if yours does not.)
  4. Connect the device to the computer through USB.
  5. From a terminal on a computer, type the following to boot the device into fastboot mode:
    adb reboot bootloader
  6. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissions fastboot”, try running fastboot as root.
  7. From the same terminal, type the following command to unlock the bootloader:
    fastboot oem get_unlock_data
  8. If the device doesn’t automatically reboot, reboot it from the menu. It should now be unlocked.
  9. Since the device resets completely, you will need to re-enable USB debugging on the device to continue.

Troubleshooting

If you have issues with fastboot or adb not being found, make sure that the Android SDK folder /platform-tools, which contains the adb and fastboot files, are in the path of execution for commands typed at the terminal. Usually typing something like

# PATH=$PATH:/your/specific/path/to/android/sdk/platform-tools/

will work for that terminal session.

Note:

The above command requires a bash-like shell. If you’re running a linux distribution which uses a shell such as csh or tcsh, first run /bin/bash to start a bash shell. See http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-find-out-what-shell-im-using.html or google for more help on that. You will need bash later as well, when using the “. build/envsetup.sh” command.

Note: Linux Mint users

If you have problems with adb (“file not found”) and you’re using 64-bit linux (I don’t know much about Mint, so maybe it’s all 64-bit?) try doing this to see if adb works better:

$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

You’ll be using fastboot again to install a custom recovery.

Build CyanogenMod and CyanogenMod Recovery

Prepare the Build Environment

Note:

You only need to do these steps the first time you build. If you previously prepared your build environment and have downloaded the CyanogenMod source code for another device, skip to Prepare the device-specific code.

Install the SDK

If you have not previously installed adb and fastboot, install the Android SDK. “SDK” stands for Software Developer Kit, and it includes useful tools that you can use to flash software, look at the system logs in real time, grab screenshots, and more– all from your computer.

Helpful Tip

While the SDK contains lots of different things– the two tools you are most interested in for building Android are adb and fastboot, located in the /platform-tools directory.

Install the Build Packages

Several “build packages” are needed to build CyanogenMod. You can install these using the package manager of your choice.

Helpful Tip

A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt-get install command directly in the Terminal. (Learn more about the apt packaging tool system from Wikipedia.)

For both 32-bit & 64-bit systems, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential curl flex git gnupg gperf libesd0-dev liblz4-tool libncurses5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop maven openjdk-7-jdk pngcrush schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

In addition to the above, for 64-bit systems, get these:

g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32ncurses5-dev lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z1-dev

For Ubuntu 15.10 (wily) and newer, substitute:

  • lib32readline-gplv2-devlib32readline6-dev

For Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) and newer, substitute (additionally see java notes below):

  • libwxgtk2.8-devlibwxgtk3.0-dev
  • openjdk-7-jdkopenjdk-8-jdk

Java versions: Different versions of CyanogenMod require different versions of the JDK (Java Development Kit):

  • CyanogenMod 7 – 9: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6
  • CyanogenMod 10.1: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7
  • CyanogenMod 10.2 – 11.0: Sun/Oracle Java SE 1.6 or 1.7 (OpenJDK 1.7 works fine, but the build system will display a warning)
  • CyanogenMod 12.0 – 13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (see note about OpenJDK 1.8 below)
  • CyanogenMod 14.1: OpenJDK 1.8

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) or newer and OpenJDK: Since OpenJDK 1.7 was removed from the official Ubuntu repositories, you have a couple options:

  1. Obtain OpenJDK 1.7 from the openjdk-r PPA
  2. Enable experimental OpenJDK 1.8 support in CyanogenMod 13.0 (not available in earlier version). To enable OpenJDK 1.8 support, add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc file: export EXPERIMENTAL_USE_JAVA8=true.

Also see http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html which lists needed packages.

Create the directories

You will need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ mkdir -p ~/android/system

Install the repo command

Enter the following to download the “repo” binary and make it executable (runnable):

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

Put the ~/bin directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Initialize the CyanogenMod source repository

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the cm branch entered here is the one you wish to build and is supported on your device.
$ cd ~/android/system/
$ repo init -u https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-13.0

Download the source code

To start the download of all the source code to your computer:

$ repo sync

The CM manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part means that there will be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. -c will ask repo to pull in only the current branch, instead of the entire CM history.

Prepare to wait a long time while the source code downloads.

Helpful Tip

The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from CyanogenMod and Google. Remember it, as you can do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date.

Get prebuilt apps (CM11 and below)

Next,

$ cd ~/android/system/vendor/cm

then enter:

$ ./get-prebuilts

You won’t see any confirmation- just another prompt. But this should cause some prebuilt apps to be loaded and installed into the source code. Once completed, this does not need to be done again.

Prepare the device-specific code

Helpful Tip – Errors during breakfast

Different maintainers setup their device inheritance rules differently. Some require a vendor directory to be populated before breakfast will even succeed. If you receive an error here about vendor makefiles, then jump down to the next section Extract proprietary blobs. The first portion of breakfast should have succeeded at pulling in the device tree and the extract blobs script should be available. After completing that section, you can rerun breakfast ghost

After the source downloads, ensure you are in the root of the source code (cd ~/android/system), then type:

$ source build/envsetup.sh
$ breakfast ghost

This will download the device specific configuration and kernel source for your device. An alternative to using the breakfast command is to build your own local manifest. To do this, you will need to locate your device on CyanogenMod’s GitHub and list all of the repositories defined in cm.dependencies in your local manifest.

Helpful Tip

If you want to know more about what source build/envsetup.sh does or simply want to know more about the breakfast, brunch and lunch commands, you can head over to the Envsetup help page.

Helpful Tip

Instead of typing cd ~/android/system every time you want to return back to the root of the source code, here’s a short command that will do it for you: croot. To use this command, you must first run source build/envsetup.sh from ~/android/system.

Extract proprietary blobs

Now ensure that your Moto X 2013 is connected to your computer via the USB cable and that you are in the ~/android/system/device/motorola/ghost directory (you can cd ~/android/system/device/motorola/ghost if necessary). Then run the extract-files.sh script:

$ ./extract-files.sh

You should see the proprietary files (aka “blobs”) get pulled from the device and moved to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory. If you see errors about adb being unable to pull the files, adb may not be in the path of execution. If this is the case, see the adb page for suggestions for dealing with “command not found” errors.

Note:

Your device should already be running a build of CyanogenMod for the branch you wish to build for the extract-files.sh script to function properly.

Note:

It’s important that these proprietary files are extracted to the ~/android/system/vendor/motorola directory by using the extract-files.sh script. Makefiles are generated at the same time to make sure the blobs are eventually copied to the device. Without these blobs, CyanogenMod may build without error, but you’ll be missing important functionality, such as graphics libraries that enable you to see anything!

Turn on caching to speed up build

You can speed up subsequent builds by adding

export USE_CCACHE=1

to your ~/.bashrc file (what’s a .bashrc file?). Then, specify the amount of disk space to dedicate to ccache by typing this from the top of your Android tree:

prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This only needs to be run once and the setting will be remembered. Anywhere in the range of 25GB to 100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration. See more information about ccache on Google’s android build environment initialization page.

Helpful Tip

If you are a very active developer, working on many other projects than just Android, you might prefer to keep your Android ccache independent (because it’s huge and can slow down the efficiency of ccache in your other projects). Beginning with CyanogenMod 12.1, you can specify environment variables for the location and size of CyanogenMod’s ccache. Some syntax examples: export ANDROID_CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/android/.ccache" and export ANDROID_CCACHE_SIZE="50G".

Start the build

Time to start building! So now type:

$ croot
$ brunch ghost

The build should begin.

Helpful Tip

If the build doesn’t start, try lunch and choose your device from the menu. If that doesn’t work, try breakfast and choose from the menu. The command make ghost should then work.

Helpful Tip

A second, bonus tip! If you get a command not found error for croot, brunch, or lunch, be sure you’ve done the source build/envsetup.sh command in this Terminal session from the ~/android/system directory.

Helpful Tip

A third tip! If the build to fails while downloading Gello, you’ll need to import a missing certificate into Maven’s truststore. Detailed instructions on how to do that can be found here

If the build breaks…

  • If you experience this not-enough-memory-related error…
ERROR: signapk.jar failed: return code 1make: *** [out/target/product/ghost/cm_ghost-ota-eng.root.zip] Error 1

…you may want to make the following change to ~/android/system/build/tools/releasetools/common.py:

Search for instances of -Xmx2048m (it should appear either under OPTIONS.java_args or near usage of signapk.jar), and replace it with -Xmx1024m or -Xmx512m.

Then start the build again (with brunch).

  • If you see a message about things suddenly being “killed” for no reason, your (virtual) machine may have run out of memory or storage space. Assign it more resources and try again.

Install the build

Assuming the build completed without error (it will be obvious when it finishes), type:

$ cd $OUT

in the same terminal window that you did the build. Here you’ll find all the files that were created. The stuff that will go in /system is in a folder called system. The stuff that will become your ramdisk is in a folder called root. And your kernel is called… kernel.

But that’s all just background info. The two files we are interested in are (1) recovery.img, which contains CyanogenMod Recovery, and (2) cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-ghost.zip, which is the CyanogenMod installation package.

Installing a custom recovery using fastboot

See All About Recovery Images for more information about custom recoveries and their capabilities.

  1. Make sure your computer has working fastboot and adb.
  1. Connect the Moto X 2013 to the computer via USB.
  2. Make sure the fastboot binary is in your PATH or that you place the recovery image in the same directory as fastboot.
  3. Open a terminal on your PC and reboot the device into fastboot mode by typing
    adb reboot bootloader
    or by using the hardware key combination for your device while it is powered off.
  4. Once the device is in fastboot mode, verify your PC sees the device by typing
    fastboot devices
    • If you don’t see your device serial number, and instead see “<waiting for device>”, fastboot is not configured properly on your machine. See fastboot documentation for more info.
    • If you see “no permissionsfastboot”, make sure your UDEV rules are setup correctly.
  5. Flash recovery onto your device by entering the following command:
    fastboot flash recovery your_recovery_image.img
    where the latter part is the filename of the recovery image.
  6. Once the flash completes successfully, reboot the device into recovery to verify the installation.
    • Note: Some ROMs overwrite recovery at boot time so if you do not plan to immediately boot into recovery to install CyanogenMod, please be aware that this may overwrite your custom recovery with the stock one.

Install CyanogenMod

Back to the $OUT directory on your computer– you should see a file that looks something like:

cm-13.0-20161224-UNOFFICIAL-ghost.zip

Note:

The above file name may vary depending on the version of CM you are building. Your build may not include a version number or may identify itself as a “KANG” rather than UNOFFICIAL version. Regardless, the file name will end in .zip and should be titled similarly to official builds.

Now you can flash the cm...zip file above as usual via recovery mode. Before doing so, now is a good time to make a backup of whatever installation is currently running on the device in case something goes wrong with the flash attempt. While CyanogenMod Recovery doesn’t have a backup feature, there are other custom recoveries available that do. You can also use something like Titanium Backup (root required) as an alternative.

Success! So….what’s next?

You’ve done it! Welcome to the elite club of self-builders. You’ve built your operating system from scratch, from the ground up. You are the master/mistress of your domain… and hopefully you’ve learned a bit on the way and had some fun too.

Now that you’ve succeeded in building CyanogenMod for your device, here are some suggestions on what to do next.

Also, be sure to take a glance at the Dev Center on this wiki for all kinds of more detailed information about developer topics ranging from collecting logs, understanding what’s in the source code directories, submitting your own contributions, porting CyanogenMod to new devices, and a lot more.

Congrats again!

Content of this page is based on informations from wiki.cyanogenmod.org, under CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.