First ROM Since Cyanogen to Truly Embrace Open-Source

[Sniffle]

Quietly, a team of 4 Developers/Testers have been working in their labs day and night to produce the first truly open-source ROM since Cyanogen. Without using anything from outside sources this group has managed to re-invent the wheel several times, including the smallest bash shell to date able to be used on the android system, Vixie-Cron for low level task scheduling, Reboot option in the power control menu also allowing for rebooting into recovery, as well as a few other "under the hood" tweaks. The mastermind behind this rom, Austen ****en(CVPCS), has finally deemed the current version 0.5.0 to be open to public beta. The name of this ROM you ask?

Link to the main Sapphire site: start [CVPCS Sapphire Wiki]

While CVPCS was hard at work putting bash into a car crusher. Todd Swindoll (Sniffle), who is well known in the android community for his beginning android compiling guide, has been hard at work on the accompanying site to this ROM. Not only is the ROM site now available, but also there is a wiki available with guides for adding some of these same features to your own "compiled from source" roms including his full original guide in wiki form, Busybox without having to modify source, and Superuser.apk and root while only modifying one source file, with more to come!

Link to generic android wiki site: start [CVPCS Android Wiki]

(quote from CVPCS site)
Special thanks to:
Todd(sniffle): for helping me from the beginning to present on this project, and never tiring of my constant talk over it
Evan(mayh3m): for helping me test EVERYTHING about my ROM, and the continual data/system wipes he no doubt had to endure
Corey(synik4l): for supporting me in this project as well as getting me in touch with many of the android developers
Pete(pete): for answering some of my questions and putting me in touch with several people
Koush: for his willingness to help me with bug fixes, as well as for all of the wonderful work he's done
Cyanogen: for all of his hard work that served as a guide to help me figure out the android build process
Alldroid.org: for graciously offering hosting space for the various files that are available on this site

 

[Jdane07]

........?

 

[DeeMat]

Can we get screenshots or something?

 

[Brett]

When I get home ill probably give it a shot but only if everything seems kosher.

 

[Sniffle]

it looks stock...

it's not a theme though we will be supporting themes, it is a true compiled form source rom.

if that doesn't strike a small tiny chord in your heart, wait until we have the darkedge, or smoked glass blue theme supported

 

[pjjanak]

Seems pretty well put together. Glad to see another contender in the pool. Once Google releases 2.2 to the AOSP, I will definitely be looking to try this out.

Peter

 

[Sniffle]

thanks much! don't worry once the froyo source dropped this rom will be updated to 2.2 very quickly!

 

[Brett]

it looks stock...

it's not a theme though we will be supporting themes, it is a true compiled form source rom.

if that doesn't strike a small tiny chord in your heart, wait until we have the darkedge, or smoked glass blue theme supported

not bad. i actually prefer stock over those themes so that doesn't bother me.

if you could describe the top three features that your rom has that other roms dont in only 3 sentences, I'm sold

i have been really looking forward to getting a Droid Dev in this forum but have not had any luck with that. if this rom is as good as you say it is then i think you will definitely have a bunch of fans here.

 

[Sniffle]

hmmm a short comprehensive features list i can do that.(1) The main Features include: Smallest fully featured, colored, bash shell compiled to date for the droid, vixie-cron low level task scheduler, nano text editor for command line editing, Reboot and reboot recovery option in the power menu(reboot recovery not available anywhere else as a menu option), Helix Launcher2 customized by me to be more stable and have 5 columns in both landscape and portrait.(2)

sorry couldn't resist the sentence numbering(3)

 

[Brett]

haha that is definitely tempting. i just wish it was 2.2 or had JIT enabled inside the build.

once i have a day off ill give it a test and see what i think. its only monday and the weekend is so far away

 

[Sniffle]

once 2.2 drops it will be available very shortly after jit and all

 

[pjjanak]

Are you guys going to make this ROM available in Clockwork ROM Manager?

Peter

 

[Sniffle]

yes we are we just have to get it hosted in it's final home of alldroid.org who has graciously offered to host the files for us.

 

[DeeMat]

hmmm a short comprehensive features list i can do that.(1) The main Features include: Smallest fully featured, colored, bash shell compiled to date for the droid, vixie-cron low level task scheduler, nano text editor for command line editing, Reboot and reboot recovery option in the power menu(reboot recovery not available anywhere else as a menu option), Helix Launcher2 customized by me to be more stable and have 5 columns in both landscape and portrait.(2)

sorry couldn't resist the sentence numbering(3)

Thank you for the description, Sniffles. I am trying to go through a period of leaving my phone alone (more than a few days!) but might try this after I hear other's feedback.

 

[Sniffle]

i understand what you mean...

 

[TreyDaPrince]

Soon as it reaches rom manager, I'll download it and give it a whirl.

 

[cvpcs]

Soon as it reaches rom manager, I'll download it and give it a whirl.

i've been in contact with koush. just waiting for the permanent storage at alldroid

 

[ebruot]

I tried the rom for a couple hours. Seemed pretty stable and i like the reboot into recovery on the power menu. Went back to Onix only because i missed the speed. (I didn't try JIT because i haven't had the best luck with JIT on 2.1, maybe play with that this weekend.) Hopefully official 2.2 source will be released soon and i will definitely try your rom when you get the 2.2 implemented into it.

 

[cvpcs]

haha that is definitely tempting. i just wish it was 2.2 or had JIT enabled inside the build.

once i have a day off ill give it a test and see what i think. its only monday and the weekend is so far away

The ROM does support 2.1 JIT, if you go into terminal emulator, type "dalvikjit on" and then reboot. 2.1 JIT was never very stable, but it does make a noticable increase in performance. The small amount of testing I did within it showed that with a 1000mhz LV kernel and JIT enabled, i was averaging 12~14 MFLOPS in linpack.

 

[arw01]

What benefit is the cron port in the droid? I wondered about cron support in the native source, but have not installed enough pieces of the sdk to download via git and poke around.

I've built a few linux from scratch servers for the house over the last few years so have a bit of a leg up on what the pieces are.

Something I noticed the other night was that the stock email app (not gmail) if left running as the foreground when you let the screen blank out will chew up the battery over night!

What kinds of tweaks to the source can you make to cut down on battery drain? And I've wondered about all the apps pulling in stock libraries where maybe one or two functions were really called in the whole library.