Android

Building Android (operating system) for an embedded A10 device can be done in a variety of ways. One method is to use the repo tool from google and point to a git repository.

Here is one example of building and flashing Android on the "cubieboard". This same method should apply to other A10 boards.

Android repo setup instructions for Android on A10
1) Install Java 1.6 JDK (recently Oracle has made this more difficult, but you can do it following these instructions:)

Get the binary here: Oracle Java 1.6

2) setup repo tool

3) Get the sources and sync the android repository (this will download a large amount of files and take a while) mkdir cubie_android_ics && cd cubie_android_ics repo init -u https://github.com/matson-hall/manifest.git -b ics-cubieboard cp .repo/manifests/local_manifest.xml .repo/

4)Fix the bad manifest: (fixed now, so skip this step) sudo cd cubie_android_ics/.repo sudo leafpad local_manifest.xml Now change this line and save the modified manifest:  to: 

5)sync the repository: repo sync

6) build android -- (Note: you will need around 40GB of free space to build android) source build/envsetup.sh lunch 4  # option 4 is cubieboard-eng make -j4   # there maybe errors like to ask you "make update-api"

7) Create the install image: chmod +x ./tools/pack-cm.sh ./tools/pack-cm.sh

You will see: -image is at- /home/username/cubie/allwinner-pack-tools/pack/sun4i_linux_cubieboard.img

Detailed instructions for Ubuntu 12.04 (and variants)
(courtesy of Silverio Diquigiovanni)

Introduction
In that document I will describe step by step all operations needed to build android ICS for AllWinner cubieboard using XUBUNTU 12.04-64Bit Precise Pangolin LTS. Same info are valid for all UBUNTU 12.04-64Bit distros like LUBUNTU, KUBUNTU and so on. I've also tried, with success, to use XUBUNTU 12.10-64bit so some parts are also 12.10 related.

PS: That's a document for DUMMIES / NOOBS so don't care if I was so pedant in some step description.

To keep simple my job I've installed XUBUNTU in a VMware Virtual Machine, actually in VMware Fusion with Mac OS X Lion as host computer. To work fine the virtual machine should have at least 4GB of ram and a disk of least 40GB. Also SWAP disk is important and mine was set to 2GB. More than one CPU are apprecied.

PS: I've used a virtual machine because some things on XUBUNTU evironment need to be "forced" and I would not to use that for my daily jobs, but you can choose to use your working machine.

So : - Get xubuntu 12.04-64Bit from xubuntu repositories and install it in a virtual machine. Remember to update it. - Install VMware Tools (if you need them - not necessary).

SET BASIC PATH AND ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS
cd ~/ mkdir -p android mkdir -p android/bin

ADD export paths for android develop environment

nano ~/.bashrc export PATH=$PATH:/home/shine/android/bin
 * 1) add this line at file tail

CLOSE and REOPEN terminal console

X - INSTALL JAVA DEVELOPMENT KIT FROM ORACLE
DOWNLOAD and INSTALL repo

sudo apt-get install curl curl https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/googlesource/git-repo/repo > ~/android/bin/repo chmod a+x ~/android/bin/repo

DOWNLOAD and INSTALL jdk-6u24-linux-x64.bin from oracle download page

cd ~/Downloads/ chmod +x jdk-6u24-linux-x64.bin ./jdk-6u24-linux-x64.bin

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/jvm sudo mv jdk1.6.0_24 /usr/lib/jvm sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_24/bin/java" 1 sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_24/bin/javac" 1 sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_24/bin/javaws" 1 sudo update-alternatives --config java sudo update-alternatives --config javac

sudo nano /etc/environment JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_24"
 * 1) add this line at file tail

source /etc/environment

X - PREPARE THE ANDROID NEEDED TOOLS AND LIBS (FOR 12.04)
sudo apt-get install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 \ x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \ libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc \ zlib1g-dev:i386

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so

X - PREPARE THE ANDROID NEEDED TOOLS AND LIBS (FOR 12.10)
sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential zip curl zlib1g-dev zlib1g-dev:i386 \ libc6-dev lib32ncurses5-dev ia32-libs x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev:i386 \ libreadline6-dev:i386 lib32z-dev libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib \ mingw32 tofrodos python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc readline-common libreadline6-dev \ libreadline6 lib32readline-gplv2-dev libncurses5-dev lib32readline5 lib32readline6 \ libreadline-dev libreadline6-dev:i386 libreadline6:i386 bzip2 libbz2-dev libbz2-1.0 \ libghc-bzlib-dev lib32bz2-dev libsdl1.2-dev libesd0-dev squashfs-tools pngcrush schedtool \ libwxgtk2.8-dev python

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so

Unfortunately ICS don't compile with gcc (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.2-2ubuntu1) 4.7.2 already installed on (*)ubuntu so we need to manually install 4.4 version with following command:

sudo apt-get install gcc-4.4 g++-4.4 g++-4.4-multilib gcc-4.4-multilib

and manually change the softlink with : ...

X - IS TIME TO BUILD ANDROID FROM SOURCES
mkdir -p ~/android/build/Cubieboard cd ~/android/build/Cubieboard/ wget http://dl.cubieboard.org/software/a10-cubieboard/android/cubieboard_opentv.tar.gz (also look at http://github.com/cubieboard)

Now we will check that cubieboard_opentv.tar.gz match what used by that document:

md5sum cubieboard_opentv.tar.gz $ -> d36631c98f30ebc0f43eeafeba8201ec  cubieboard_opentv.tar.gz

tar -zxf cubieboard_opentv.tar.gz cd cubieboard-tv-sdk/

A this point is necessary to fix a but in cubieboard_opentv script and precisely to following file:

nano frameworks/base/media/libstagefright/Android.mk search LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES and add to list: libstagefright_rtsp \ so you get:

LOCAL_STATIC_LIBRARIES := \ libstagefright_color_conversion \ libstagefright_aacenc \ libstagefright_amrnbenc \ libstagefright_amrwbenc \ libstagefright_avcenc \ libstagefright_m4vh263enc \ libstagefright_matroska \ libstagefright_timedtext \ libvpx \ libstagefright_mpeg2ts \ libstagefright_id3 \ libFLAC \ libstagefright_rtsp \ ...

Time to build all from cubieboard_opentv root path :)

. build/envsetup.sh lunch        # (perhaps typo? Maybe 'launch'? --simos) make -j4

and create the .img that is suitable for LiveSuit

tools/pack-cm.sh

Install LiveSuit on Linux (64bit)
sudo apt-get install dkms git clone https://github.com/matson-hall/allwinner-pack-tools.git -b cubieboard unzip allwinner-pack-tools/tools/Livesuit-linux.zip chmod +x LiveSuit_For_Linux64/LiveSuit.run ./LiveSuit_For_Linux64/LiveSuit.run #livesuit will be installed to ~/Bin

Flash nand flash on your board
sudo ~/Bin/LiveSuit/LiveSuit.sh #run livesuit

1) Livesuit GUI will start

2) Choose the image we built just now (sun4i_linux_cubieboard.img)

3) Disconnect all power to board, connect USB cable to board side, but not computer, then hold down "usb boot" button on your board, and plug in USB to computer -- a new device should be detected. If using a virtual machine you may need to modify your .vmx file to include the "skip reset usb-quirk" option. Instead of this method, you can follow the instructions to get into FEL mode.

4) It should ask to format the partition first, say yes.

5) You should see the progress bar increasing.

6) flashing should complete in about 3-4 minutes

= See also =
 * Instruction to build jellybean for cubieboard