Building your own ROM

[LeslieAnn]

2. I was speaking of the virgin mobile animation that runs immediately at boot on the stock ROM. This is done with 12 rle images named sprint_power_on_%d so it's obviously hacked from a similar animation for sprint. I assumed all thunderc variants did this and it would be desirable to have. But perhaps one or both of those assumptions is faulty?

IHO has removed the Virgin splash animation (RLE images) ages ago as did the original Harmonia.

However, my attempt at animating it in IHO failed. Something is missing to allow for that to work, a few others have asked about it but no one has gotten it working. I looked around the net a lot trying to find a fix but I never saw anything on it.

 

[Blastin]

I see that you guys are working a way to fix the battery charging while being off.

How would I charge my dead battery? It tries to boot but it can't since the battery is dead. The LG logo flashes on the screen on and off alongside the buttom button. I left my phone in emergency mode for one hour but my phone still refuses to boot. My computer refuses to see the device with ADB.

Can one of you talented devs help me on IRC? I desperately need my phone working. I'm scared its bricked because it spend hours turning on and off while I was sleeping.

 

[anthonycr]

Here's a link to Blastin's problem he posted originally here.

 

[tdm]

Blarf spent a couple of weeks trying to get the radio to work when he first put IHO together. He finally came to the conclusion that even though it's in the specs for the chip, it's most likely disabled by a pin or a lack of connected I/O (he even did a visual inspection after disassembly). I know several others attempted to get it to function, all in vain. I do not know if it's necessary for compilation.

Since you clearly know your way around, if you have time, looking into the headset mic situation would be appreciated by many. Blarf, thekraven, Bob, and I have all been looking into it as well. Here in Vegas, the new year brought a new law for cell phone usage while driving, so this is one issue I would love to resolve!

Right, I remember reading something about the FM radio investigation now. IIRC the Opt-V didn't come with an FM app stock. Did the Opt-S? If neither did, I'd say there was a good reason the vendors pulled it -- likely just as blarf suspects, it's probably not wired up. But we should probably ping users of the other three supported models to check for sure.

Honestly I never use wired headphones for calling and I have a bluetooth speaker in my car. I will need to dig out my VM supplied earphones to test. I am not sure how much time I'll put into it though since I don't use ever use it. If you're honestly concerned about driving, I have a Motorola T325 and it works pretty darn well. And for when you're not driving, perhaps either bluetooth headphones or something like the Sony MW600 might work?

 

[tdm]

IHO has removed the Virgin splash animation (RLE images) ages ago as did the original Harmonia.

However, my attempt at animating it in IHO failed. Something is missing to allow for that to work, a few others have asked about it but no one has gotten it working. I looked around the net a lot trying to find a fix but I never saw anything on it.

I got it working. It's really easy:

1. Start with the changes for the chargerlogo (eg. the boot-pause stuff).

2. Add "exec /sbin/bootlogo" under "exec /sbin/chargerlogo".

3. Add the vendor bootlogo binary under sbin and copy the bootimages directory over.

Repack, flash, and enjoy!

The one minor glitch is that initlogo.rle flashes briefly before bootllogo takes over. So that should be disabled before being considered "user ready".

I'll try to get my github up in a couple days. In the meantime, let me know if you want my android scribble rle images.

 

[tdm]

2. Add "exec /sbin/bootlogo" under "exec /sbin/chargerlogo".

Actually, that's probably not what we want -- it will block the init process. It should be exec'd or started as a service after sysvinit starts up. But it does work!

 

[tdm]

Looking forward to your contributions! Let us know when you have your github setup well enough to share!

Okay I think I've got my github in order. I've initially forked blarf's device_lge_thunderc repo and figured out how to cherry-pick Jerry's changes so that I don't need to manually diff/patch anymore (source control ftw!)

I've also created a boot.img that properly does charging while offline and the vendor's RLE based bootlogo. I'd like to collect all five sets of RLEs and put them into the build. But first I need to sort out some issues:

1. I've only got the VM files. Does anyone have the ones from Sprint and the other carriers?

2. I can put the RLE files in device/lge/thunderc but it occurred to me that they may belong in vendor/lge/thunderc/proprietary. But that also seems to apply to chargerlogo and its images, and they got dropped into device/lge/thunderc already. Thoughts?

3. Would folks prefer a generic animation to the vendor animation? If so, I can toss a generic animation into device/lge/thunderc for ROM maintainers to hack up in addition to the vendor files.

4. What's the best way to initiate a pull request when done? Does blarf monitor github pull requests or should I send a request directly? [sorry I'm still a github noob...]

After the above is sorted out, I'll push my changes and start marching down my todo-list.

Thanks!

 

[JerryScript]

Okay I think I've got my github in order. I've initially forked blarf's device_lge_thunderc repo and figured out how to cherry-pick Jerry's changes so that I don't need to manually diff/patch anymore (source control ftw!)

I've also created a boot.img that properly does charging while offline and the vendor's RLE based bootlogo. I'd like to collect all five sets of RLEs and put them into the build. But first I need to sort out some issues:

1. I've only got the VM files. Does anyone have the ones from Sprint and the other carriers?

2. I can put the RLE files in device/lge/thunderc but it occurred to me that they may belong in vendor/lge/thunderc/proprietary. But that also seems to apply to chargerlogo and its images, and they got dropped into device/lge/thunderc already. Thoughts?

3. Would folks prefer a generic animation to the vendor animation? If so, I can toss a generic animation into device/lge/thunderc for ROM maintainers to hack up in addition to the vendor files.

4. What's the best way to initiate a pull request when done? Does blarf monitor github pull requests or should I send a request directly? [sorry I'm still a github noob...]

After the above is sorted out, I'll push my changes and start marching down my todo-list.

Thanks!

Thank you for posting your source!

1- I have the stock VM nandroid, you should be able to extract what you want from there

2- For the time being, follow the status quo, if/when we package things for CM, they can be moved then

3- A generic one would be nice, I'm always customizing things

4- Pull requests are best initiated via githubs web interface. Blarf does respond to them, usually in a timely manner. An email to let him know what you've done would help, he doesn't monitor this thread for his own reasons.

Thanks again, looking forward to seeing what you've been up to!

 

[tdm]

Okay I pushed out my first set of changes (offline charging and vendor bootlogo animation) and sent a pull request to blarf. I screwed up by not creating a topic branch because I'm still learning git, but I'm sure that he can cherry-pick what he wants, and so can anyone else that's interested.

 

[drezliok]

Progress is exciting.

 

[JerryScript]

Okay I pushed out my first set of changes (offline charging and vendor bootlogo animation) and sent a pull request to blarf. I screwed up by not creating a topic branch because I'm still learning git, but I'm sure that he can cherry-pick what he wants, and so can anyone else that's interested.

What's your github account name? Or did I miss it?

Edit: nvm, I found it via your pull request to IHO.

 

[JerryScript]

@tdm: Powered off charging seems to be working great now! Thanks for your sharing your work with everyone!

 

[mrg666]

tdm, thank you so much for joining the development team and fixing long-standing charging issue. I have merged your commit along with Virgin boot splash and I can confirm that it works. I am not even sure if this is an issue but booting from off state requires disconnecting the charger.

Did I say thank you? Excellent work!

 

[JerryScript]

tdm, thank you so much for joining the development team and fixing long-standing charging issue. I have merged your commit along with Virgin boot splash and I can confirm that it works. I am not even sure if this is an issue but booting from off state requires disconnecting the charger.

Did I say thank you? Excellent work!

Long pressing the power button while powered-off-charging boots the phone up for me. I hold the power button till I see the LG logo.

Thanks again tdm, everyone's loving the fix!

 

[mrg666]

I tried again and booting from off state while connected to power worked this time. So, we are on the same page.

 

[tdm]

tdm, thank you so much for joining the development team and fixing long-standing charging issue. I have merged your commit along with Virgin boot splash and I can confirm that it works. I am not even sure if this is an issue but booting from off state requires disconnecting the charger.

Did I say thank you? Excellent work!

My pleasure. I am glad to be able to have something to contribute after joining so late.

 

[Whyzor]

Man I wish some of you talented devs would join the Motorola Triumph group (the price is coming down to $240 on Amazon now . Well hopefully we'll re-unite on a future VM phone! (Optimus Black or better!)

 

[anthonycr]

Question to devs: I have some basic Java and c++ knowledge that I've learned over the last few months in school. Thats all... so does anyone think it would be too hard to learn how to build my own rom? So far all I've done with android is changing all the pngs in some of my framework, simple stuff. I read the first few pages of this thread and it looks complicated, but I'm willing to learn.

 

[tdm]

Question to devs: I have some basic Java and c++ knowledge that I've learned over the last few months in school. Thats all... so does anyone think it would be too hard to learn how to build my own rom? So far all I've done with android is changing all the pngs in some of my framework, simple stuff. I read the first few pages of this thread and it looks complicated, but I'm willing to learn.

In my experience, the ability to be persistent and roll with the flow as several projects all move independently is much more important than any ability to code. Between network issues, multiple projects updating at different times, and simple build breakages, it can easily take half a dozen tries to get a ROM built. My experience was especially bad because I tried to init my repo and build my first ROM during the long kernel.org outage. Thankfully you won't need to go through that.

Once you do get a successful build, the next most important ability is simply hacking skill. It doesn't take much raw developer skill to implement most of the changes that most folks like to do. It just takes an eye for following examples and learning how to figure out what went wrong when you break your build (and you will).

That said, it's a very rewarding experience to see your first successful custom ROM boot up on your phone. It far outweighs the initial frustration you may find when your initial tries don't work out for whatever reason.

Good luck and welcome in advance to the ROM building community!

 

[JerryScript]

I agree with what tdm stated. If you just want to build, it's not too difficult to get started. Pulling in changes and applying commits will seem challenging at first, but only because git and gerrit were written by/for those who use them, not for those who want to learn to use them. That being said, the documentation and functionality of the github web interface has come a long way.

Since you do know a thing or two about programming, you'll be interested in the tools. Be sure you understand logcat and dmesg, and how to interpret the output of each. They will give you clues to finding whatever bugs you may come across. And if you take the time (and have a system capable of it), I would recommend Eclipse or Netbeans as an ide. They both offer in panel debugging, and will help you fix things before they are broken.