I know I could do it if I knew how to do it; but, I don't know how to do it, lol. If someone had a well articulated guide/manual on how to do so I'm sure I could figure it out. I did a quick search earlier with no such luck of finding one. Anyone know of a really good one?
Blackhawk, your best method to learning how to work on your own ROMs is to start with a deodexed stock build then start playing around with some of the flashable mods and stuff. Download them, extract them and see what inside is different when compared to untouched AOSP so you can see the changes and pick up on stuff. Since the Nexus is AOSP things are pretty simple and basic. Most of your physical "looks and theme" changes are going to be performed in the framework-res.apk in the drawable-hdpi folder. The framework-res.apk also holds the key to most/many of your edits and changes to most ROMs. Going into the res/values/ directory holds most of your key xml files to edit things, make color changes, etc.. Also a good program to use to compare files and see the differences in things is WinMerge.
Jerry Hildenbrand here at AC has written a very basic but yet informative guide a while back to getting started with ROMs and working with them. I would take a look at that and also look into some of the other threads that people like Dreamsforgotten from ACS has done over at XDA on guides to theming and working with APK Manager which is used to decompile/recompile a ROM which is required when you start working with code and theming of a ROM.
General ROM FAQ (A lot here you probably know already but its still worth a good read because Jerry points out a bunch of key things to getting started with working on ROMs)
[Guide] Learning To Theme: Putting the tools to use pt. 1 (This is a great read, I know its aimed at the Samsung Epic 4g but it gets you started also with the basics of themes, how to work with the tools required for ROM development and how to set them up properly)
I know your probably saying to yourself I'm not interested in themes on a ROM but technically unless your really modifying code and actually creating something from scratch and doing major changes then really your just "theming" a ROM. The definition in the hacking world of a true ROM dev is one who really is digging into source code, doing massive xml and smali code edits and changes.
Maybe something here I posted will help you in your journey and feel free to bounce questions off me, I'm not as familiar with things on the Nexus and AOSP yet but I have done alot of work on the Epic 4g with custom ROMs/themes and know my way around things fairly well.
Good luck!
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