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Developers of ROMs

Would it not be easier to get together and create a single ROM? If JF releases a version now, there will be what? 3? 4?
So now all themers need to create 3 or 4 ports. Also, I have noticed that a lot of these different ROMs come pre-themed. Isn't this a bit redundant?
Personally I would like a plain-jane ROM without anything added (with the exception of root). Then you can add the options you like as we have in the past rather than have them spoon fed to us whether we like them or not.

Not really. if you are familiar with how rom cooking went with teh other htc phones, each has their own style. Once we get past the "beta" mode of these roms and they are more official, the cookers will be able to theme and do that stuff on their own. You would then pick roms based on features/themes/addons that you like instead of just going with the newest one that is out like we are now.

Agreed! (This text is just to pass 10 char limit)

Darkrift said:
Not really. if you are familiar with how rom cooking went with teh other htc phones, each has their own style.
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Agreed. That was half the reason I loved recooking my old Apache every week.

but arnt all these builds just different attempts at getting a working 1.5 build?

Freedomcaller said:
but arnt all these builds just different attempts at getting a working 1.5 build?
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Not any longer. The official 1.5 has been released and therefore should just simply be giving people root and adding other options.

well no, the official hasnt been released till tmo sends it as an OTA. they will add their own "style" (junk apps, and some good stuff if we are lucky) to it and then we will have official builds. Once that happens, there will just need to be root/themes/modifications. each cook will add his own ideas into his roms and will have his own followers. There will continue to be branches off of each style as we have seen with JF > lucidrem, haykuro > TheDude etc.
I remember when JF made his first rom and I started hoping this would happen. It did not seem like it would based on what was required, but we are fast approaching a rom kitchen like environment in Android where any custom build you can dream will be available. Lets see the iphone do that!

Good point DarkRift....
I went ahead and tested out Haykuro's version and while it's pretty stable, hate the fact that half of my apps no longer work. For this reason, I'm probably going back to JF1.43 until the devs have time to get the software working on 1.5.

momentarylapseofreason said:
Personally I would like a plain-jane ROM without anything added (with the exception of root). Then you can add the options you like as we have in the past rather than have them spoon fed to us whether we like them or not.
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100% agree ...
We developers have to support 3, 4 or more different roms (different app2sd-mods not included) - that generates an unbelievable workload!
So, why not having one single base (a plain-jane rom) and all firmware-"modders" could publish one single "update.zip" (which can be applied to this basic rom) to make (specified) changes (like I've done with my kernel-update for ADP1.5 - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3699701&postcount=157)

harry_m said:
100% agree ...
We developers have to support 3, 4 or more different roms (different app2sd-mods not included) - that generates an unbelievable workload!
So, why not having one single base (a plain-jane rom) and all firmware-"modders" could publish one single "update.zip" (which can be applied to this basic rom) to make (specified) changes (like I've done with my kernel-update for ADP1.5 - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3699701&postcount=157)
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100% Disagree ....
In my past experience with a few htc wm phones, I've seen that competition between the rom "cooks" is exactly what drives them to create the next greatest rom! If they all teamed up then there wouldn't be any roms to compete against and they might lose their desire to keep improving.
And as to the extra workload for devs.... unless you are themeing, there is no extra work required? I am developing for android and the only extra workload I have is making sure my stuff works with both 1.1 and 1.5... the specific rom makes no difference. Edit: I see you are the dev of wifi tether... in which case I'm obviously completely wrong, and I agree it must be a pain in the ass(in your scenario) to make your stuff work in every rom.
This whole conversation is moot anyways, because it will never happen. Even if the current "cooks" all teamed up and worked on one rom, new people would come along who want to make their OWN rom that's different, and the cycle would continue.

The growth of new Dev's are pretty exciting for me. I love to see that we have options, everyday I have something to look forward to with all these new builds, and I hope more Dev's jump on in with new and fresh ideas. Hey you never know some one can jump in XDA with a genius mind and make our UI look like the Ophone. Now wouldn't that excite you knowing you can jump to that rom instead of being stuck on 1?

Darkrift said:
well no, the official hasnt been released till tmo sends it as an OTA.
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Incorrect. HTC has released 1.5 as an update for ADP (Dev) phones. So it *is* officially out there for Dev phones, just not an "official" TMo release for TMo branded G1s, which personally I don't particularly care about anyway (
) as I'd always take a manufacturer rom over a carrier one. I'd expect a TMo 1.5 to be practically the same as the HTC one, with additional bloatware!
Regards,
Dave

I love having all of these roms to choose from. I'm just having trouble deciding whether to give up the pdf reader, HTC VK and camera, for the ADP1.5H with multitouch. I'm thinking that sooner or later, I will be able to have all of those things in one rom though.
I am still on Haykuro's HTC build, and my phone is waaaay more exciting than the fruit phone!
The only thing that I can see wrong with this phone now, is that HTC didn't include more internal memory from the beginning. Even with the apps to sd fixes, there are still problems which crop up with those.

Azlum said:
100% Disagree ....
In my past experience with a few htc wm phones, I've seen that competition between the rom "cooks" is exactly what drives them to create the next greatest rom! If they all teamed up then there wouldn't be any roms to compete against and they might lose their desire to keep improving.
And as to the extra workload for devs.... unless you are themeing, there is no extra work required? I am developing for android and the only extra workload I have is making sure my stuff works with both 1.1 and 1.5... the specific rom makes no difference. Edit: I see you are the dev of wifi tether... in which case I'm obviously completely wrong, and I agree it must be a pain in the ass(in your scenario) to make your stuff work in every rom.
This whole conversation is moot anyways, because it will never happen. Even if the current "cooks" all teamed up and worked on one rom, new people would come along who want to make their OWN rom that's different, and the cycle would continue.
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Quality over Quantity. If they all hooked up together and made on EPIC 1.5 ROM that was plain jane but 110% stable, i would love them for it. But in the end, im waiting for JF's build. Im sure thats what he is doing.

As has been stated by people such as "Big in Japan" though....
Big In Japan said:
Android 1.5 presents more than a few problems for developers. According to Alexander Muse, applications currently running on Android won’t necessarily be compatible with Cupcake 1.5; that means a mad rush to download the new firmware and rebuild their software. Compounding the problem is the fact that the Android Market won’t allow more than one version of an app, which means developers aren’t able to simply create a new, 1.5-friendly update and leave the existing version in place for those without Cupcake. Instead, Big in Japan face creating a new build that’s also backward compatible with earlier versions of Android, something they conservatively estimate should normally take around two to three weeks of development.
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So basically, if there are ROMs that affect the software, devs will need to "choose" which ROM to use their software on. Although this is a little extreme and MOST of the time this won't be an issue, what if ROM cooking goes that far? Will you be willing to deal without applications that you use to have something else?
Just something to keep in mind.

momentarylapseofreason said:
So basically, if there are ROMs that affect the software, devs will need to "choose" which ROM to use their software on. Although this is a little extreme and MOST of the time this won't be an issue, what if ROM cooking goes that far? Will you be willing to deal without applications that you use to have something else?
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If the developers were using private APIs during the development of their application, then the fact they are broken on Cupcake is likely to be their own fault for using an API which is not necessarily static and therefore liable to change. If they only used public APIs, then it is Googles fault for changing those APIs, or the behaviour of those APIs.
This is one of the "problems" with Android being open source - you can't realistically hide the private APIs from developers since they can see them being used in the source code, and thus may be tempted to use them when in reality they should be restricting themselves to just the public APIs to ensure forwards and backwards compatibility.
Regards,
Dave

I have to agree with everyone who wants to keep things in one.
This does NOT mean that different people can't add particular modifications to what is available, it just means distributing these things as smaller components.
Start with the stock ADP1.5 image. If you want multitouch, apply the update.zip that provides multitouch (and nothing else). If you want tethering, apply the update.zip that provides the kernel with netfilter. If you want a skin (or whatever you want to call it), apply the update.zip that provides it. There is no point in bundling everything together in full system images since all this does is it makes the downloads huge and creates incompatibilities.
For example, I have always used the stock ADP firmware. I have looked at JF's full go and found that while nice, it adds things that I don't want and leaves out things that I do want, which means that it would end up being equal work to adjust those builds into something that I want as it would end up being to modify the stock image. The deciding factor is that I know exactly how my changes work against the stock image and I don't necessarily know what changes JF has made to his.

Actually since most builds are only file-based (i.e. changing some files in /system), could we make a program that (with root, of course) download the difference and apply them? Like an android market for firmware builds or say an apt for android.
Then user get the freedom to choose what they want and can go back to previous versions easily when things go wrong.
To be safe, it could just use symbolic links to apply updates, so restoring will be easier and gives the internal flash a longer life.

Help in selecting ROM

I will be receiving my fuze tomorrow and I've been doing quite a bit of research on these forums. I've come to the conclusion that I will be using a cooked ROM, and there are quite a few to choose from, so a little confusion has set in. I would like to offer a bit of friendly and constructive criticism to ROM maintainers -- Clearly state the goal you are aiming to accomplish with your ROM! It would certainly help in determining which to use (whether it be stability, speed, size, features, etc).
I'm looking to do away with the cruft of the OEM ROM and use something that is, first and foremost, stable and bug free. Performance is secondary but still important.
I guess the place to start would be, a WM6.1 ROM or a 6.5 ROM? I have read the other thread with regard to differences, but my question is of a different context. I am not tied to the 6.1 interface, so that part is irrelevant. I have heard conflicting reports on speed and battery use, but the general consensus is that 6.5 is better. Any word on stability? How about application support?
Then, as far as a particular ROM, I'm looking for something that doesn't necessarily offer all the latest and greatest, but supports a particular version (with bugfixes and performance improvements) for a while. Reading through ROM release posts, it seems that new releases typically have a few kinks to work out. I'm looking for something that has been ironed out over time, or at least will be supported for a while!
Thanks in advance,
B

ROM Choice
I would suggest PROven ROM 4.1 and 1.14.25.05 radio. Fast, stable and energy efficient. I think most folks will suggest that you flash a variety of ROMs and see for yourself what you like best. Enjoy!

If your thinking of a 6.5 rom I can strongly recommend Shep's rom, if your looking for a 6.1 rom I thought the EnergyRom was the best i've used!

Th3 Ripper said:
If your thinking of a 6.5 rom I can strongly recommend Shep's rom, if your looking for a 6.1 rom I thought the EnergyRom was the best i've used!
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I fully agree...I am running Shep's 6.5 rom without any problems. Battery is about the same as 6.1 roms, maybe a little better with certain settings.

You can cook your own ROM using Da_G's kitchen. I can help you if you want.

You have a lot of options. I would say your first option is Wm6.1 or Wm6.5. Very easy choice; WM6.5 no doubt.
You then have a choice of ROMS. I personally do not appreicate the HTC overlay software and feel as though it is pretty, fun and simple but it is more look than substance. I also find that no matter what Cooked ROM I am using that the Roms that aren't stripped down to Wm6.5 basic are simply too slow for me. Some of the cooked Roms are very fast in comparison to the HTC OEM stuff but I still use stripped Roms.
I would say plan to flash three to four times. Try a Da_G Wm6.5 Rom first to figure out what wm6.5 is like. Then go for Shep or NATF to see what a custom rom would be and finally go for broke and try your own cooked Rom.
Once you flash you will be tempted to try other Roms, so go for it. Each ROM really does have it's own unique purpose with a lot of overlapping features.

the amount of roms for the touch pro is truly dizzying so I feel your pain.
The type of roms I like are similar to DCD or NoChem's work. Clean and simple with the necessary OS tweaks/enhancements, then add my cabs.
For my first tpro rom, I'm gonna try Copper.

Are there any roms that just remove the att junk and leave everything else? My current phone is a HTC thru a small carrier that didn't add extra stuff. I was able to tweak little stuff on it w/o doing in the main os. Thanks

[Q] Differences - Prime and Revolver

What is the difference between the 2 ROMS?
When I do a search all I see are comments like "I'm using X and it's great!"
If there's a list of ROMS with notes about what makes one so great over the other that would be appreciative.

I would like to know this as well.

robojerk said:
What is the difference between the 2 ROMS?
When I do a search all I see are comments like "I'm using X and it's great!"
If there's a list of ROMS with notes about what makes one so great over the other that would be appreciative.
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I think an even better question is "What is the difference between STOCK, Revolver and Prime?"
Revolver 2.5's changelog contains "Improved battery life". Compared to what? Stock 3.2 (8.6.5.9)? Prior Stock 3.2? Prime? Revolver 2.1?
Similarly, PRIME 1.8.2 changelog shows "Choice of Touchpad Circles or Mouse Arrow" and "Lots of bugs fixed (Rotate, Compass, Wifi disconnects)", etc. Are these not in the STOCK 8.6.5.9 as well? (yes, they are)
Disclosure: I've run all versions and don't see much difference between any of them, but I'm currently on PRIME 1.8.4

jhanford,
Good point. That's what I do not understand about these "custom" roms. Seems like they offer the same functions/features as the stock rom so I do not know what exactly is the advantage of using them.

Install them and test them yourself, the proof of wether or not they are better can only be judged by your own user experience and not by what others proclaim.

I noticed a significant performance improvement after flashing Revolver compared to stock.
My browser also no longer randomly locks up and quits when going to sites with flash advertisements. YMMV, of course.

There's not really much difference between the three of them since the source code isn't released and not a lot can be changes. The latter two "custom" roms just have a few tweaks included that make it slightly faster and they usually include special kernel modules such as tunneling, governors, and sound improvements/fixes.
I've ran all three and the difference is minimal as of the current firmware since a lot of stuff is now fixed. Before 3.2 Prime and Clemsyn/Revolver were a lot more useful since IMO they were a lot faster than the official version of 3.1.

I am currently on latest version of Prime but very tempted to give Revoler a try. The only thing stopping is that I do not want to waste the countless hours that I put in to create the "Hubs"

I don't think you'll see significant customizations until Ice Cream Sandwich and the next generation of tablets come out. If you look at the overall history of custom ROMs on Android, they've basically fallen into two camps:
1. Taking something from a newer device that's not officially available for given older device and porting it. That can be new versions of the OS itself, or it could be vendor customizations like newer versions of Sense in the HTC world. Right now, all Honeycomb tablets are getting fast updates to the latest version. As for vendor customizations, there aren't heavy customizations to begin with. Vendors are mostly competing on hardware design right now, throwing in a few widgets and apps that may or may not be useful. But usually customization ports stay within a brand (i.e., an older HTC Sense device gets a newer HTC Sense version). That can be for both technical and legal reasons (even within vendors it might be a legal gray area, but it's generally tolerated). But we're still in the first generation of Honeycomb tablets for all vendors, so even the small customizations that vendors are doing are already on the devices in question.
2. Building a customized ROM from the OS source, aka Cyanogen. Since Honeycomb isn't open source, no dice there. ICS is supposed to return to an open source license.
I don't mean to trivialize what the authors of the custom ROMs that do exist have accomplished. I haven't even tried them yet. There even may be significant improvements they have been able to do within the limits of what they have. But overall, it's going to be nothing like what exists on the phone side, where vendors are improving their custom skins from one generation to the next, there are 3+ major generations to work with, and the source is available. Tablets will get there in a generation or two.

Also remembr that the custom roms are deodexed. The hulu flash mod only plays well with the deodexed roms. But really there isnt much differences bc there is no source so that limits the dev capabilities for now
Sent from my Samsung Epic

ajamils said:
I am currently on latest version of Prime but very tempted to give Revoler a try. The only thing stopping is that I do not want to waste the countless hours that I put in to create the "Hubs"
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What hubs do you speak of?

Rackers said:
What hubs do you speak of?
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Check the thread here.
Back to topic: I took the plunge and installed latest Revolver. So far, I have not found any difference between Revolver and Prime or maybe I just haven't tested it enough yet.

Have you noticed any difference in battery life between the two?

Rackers said:
Have you noticed any difference in battery life between the two?
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Not really. Then again, I haven't used it much since I flashed revolver.

[Q] ROM based on Android sources rather than on HTC stock ROMs

Hi,
I'm relatively new to the whole Android business, coming from the Blackstone running Windows Mobile 6.1, where I did some ROM cooking. So probably I don't have that much of an overview yet.
After looking around in the Android development section for this device, I realized that most (all?) ROMs are based upon the HTC stock ROMs.
However I was wondering whether there are ROMs (or projects) with the goal of bringing the stock Android sources to our devices. I'm not that much of a fan of all these modifications the OEMs are including and would like to have as much of a vanilla Android as possible. As seen with the vulnerability of htclogger, this is a justified request as all added (unneeded) stuff is just another weak point.
I'm pretty sure that the vanilla sources won't be enough to get our devices running and there are a bunch of drivers, which must be added to get (full) functionality.
The ultimate goal would be to get some sort of scripts, which would automatically grab the latest Android sources, add the necessary stuff, which is needed to get full support for our devices, and build a ROM, which then could be the base for custom ROMs using the available tools/kitchens.
So, basically, before starting something, which already exists (but I couldn't find), I would like to ask you if you know of something that suits my taste in any sense? Or am I the only one interested in this way of thinking? Is there anyone who would like to participate in this endeavor when there shouldn't be something similar already?
Thanks in advance for any helpful reference in the right direction.
Best regards,
johnpatcher

There are a lot of roms with no-sense options and you have miui and cm7

xyqtt said:
There are a lot of roms with no-sense options and you have miui and cm7
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Yeah, but all ROMs I've seen so far are based upon the stock ROMs and removed some of the included HTC stuff. There even seem to be some scripts, which would do just that after flashing such a ROM. I would like to go the bottom-up kind of approach.
As great as MIUI and CM7 are, both of them don't support the Sensation officially yet. Furthermore they try to be an alternative firmware/ROM and add a whole bunch of functionality for themselves.
Without looking into their building process, I could imagine that they are using the Android vanilla sources as a base, which would be the kind of thing I want, although I would have to investigate that further. Does anyone know something about this?

CM7 does officially support the Sensation, albeit in Alpha form.
What you want is someone to compile a ROM from source (AOSP) specifically for the Sensation but it would seem no one has taken up the challenge yet. Surprising really, there were 2-3 on the Desire

[Q] When can new roms be used?

I am a jailbroken iPhone convert. I am loving this phone so far and have heeded the warnings to not mess with the phone too much. My question is, when is it safe to use the roms that are available? Is there that big of a difference in performance? I jailbroke my iPhone to get features Apple wouldn't allow our have. what do I gain with custom roms? Thanks for all that has been done so far and look forward to what its to come.

I don't know of there is a time period to use them but most custom roms freshen up your desktop icons as well most of them improve battery life and add the ability to overclock.

You can gain quite a few features with Custom Roms. Such as overclocking, custom ui's, much better performance (snappier). I highly recommend flashing a custom ROM. Currently CM9 and CM7 are a work in progress and should be released sooner than later, (CM7 is currently in it's testing stage). Also to do all of this you have to root your device. A guide can be found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1327741&highlight=how+to+root Keep in mind many features can be gained once rooted, but as you probably know the warranty is voided.

Thanks for the help so far. The only question still remaining for me is; at what point are these roms considered stable enough for someone new to start using. I have read the warnings and really don't want to have to reinstall everything over and over again because of instability issues. thanks

ed20910 said:
Thanks for the help so far. The only question still remaining for me is; at what point are these roms considered stable enough for someone new to start using. I have read the warnings and really don't want to have to reinstall everything over and over again because of instability issues. thanks
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It really all depends on what you are after.
I will say that even the stock ROM on the Atrix 2 is not that stable, and there are a TON of bugs in it.
All the ROMs that are here are in a beta format and are not even at a 1.0 revision yet. If you are not technical at all, and don't really like playing with your device a lot, and flashing ROMs, to try and get a feature that the stock ROM is missing, then I totally advise against flashing anything. These "ROMS are completely safe and stable enough", but both lfaber06 and are I always trying to "improve" on them, no matter what revision that the ROM is at, as well as requests for new features. That really is why it may seem that people are flashing all the time, not really because of instability.
Since he and I are really the only two devs in here right now, there is not going to be a lot of choice in ROMs and since this phone is still fairly new, everything is still "new" and in beta/alpha. Since you are coming from the iphone, and flashing ROMs is not really something that you do, I say you wait until you find something you really want that is not available in the stock ROM, and has been put into one the ROMs available here, then try flashing that. Until then just hang tight for a while. There are plenty of hacks that can be done to the stock ROM, to fix things, and make that better at this time. Also take some time to learn a little about android and flashing and how it all works, not intimately, or on a very technical level, but that might save your "you know what", if you have an issue during a flash or while running an unfamiliar ROM.

Thank you VERY much. That was the answer I was looking for. I am technical savy, just haven't done much with android so far. I am one that likes to tinker and get the most out of any of my electronics.