Database Info

WM6 Rom Comparison

Just a quick idea. Would it be possible for a sticky thread controlled by the mods, or their assigned surrogates that would keep a list of the roms that would ease comparisons between them? Possibly with a spreadsheet-like file that would contain version formats, features, etc side by side. As developers create new roms or change existing ones, they could pm those in charge who could make changes to the thread. Discussions would be held elsewhere, this would be fact-based only. Just a thought. I am happy to donate my time to the cause.

There are periodic posts that come along with polls of the latest rom, but the problem is that roms are frequently coming out...I understand that this would be a nice feature, because if you disappear from the forums for even a month you are lost with what has happened since then...if anything I just look at the posts and weigh the comments to see if the rom is good or not...lol there are also stars by a post that hint at its performance...anyways good luck with your request...

Possible new website. Checking for interest.

These forums are great but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a website for mainly wm5 and wm6 devices. I'll just list a few things I'd like to have on it and hopefully get enough good feedback and ideas that will inspire me to actually design the website.
- Overview of roms for various devices. Including user reviews, screenshots, and some detailed stats on the roms such as memory after a fresh flash. (will probably need help getting those numbers as I don't have access to all the phones)
- Downloads for roms (only if uploaded by the author) otherwise, links to the respective threads here.
- Downloads, reviews, screenshots, ect of popular software. Mostly freeware.
- Guides on things such as skinning programs like S2U2, rlToday, Wisbar, ect
- Skinning sections, upload/download skins for above. Ratings ect.
- Icon packs? If anyone wants to create and upload their own icons to share?
I'm only going to have more ideas as I begin this project but I imagine that I may need some help. Also, I would like to do as much as possible with the developers and with their permission.
No actual work has been started yet. Just been thinking it would be nice to have all of this on one website or at least organized information and links all in one place.

XDA THE BEST!!!!
I run a site personally, www.PocketPC-Live.com but the strength of inteligent people here who cook ROMs, release many small and usefull utilities make this place the best!
Regards,
Carty..

Is there any benefit to putting upgradeable files in a rom?

What I mean is, it seems to me that it would be more efficient to put any/all files that may be upgraded as packages and instead of flashing cooked roms, we could flash a generic rom and uninstall old/reinstall new packages
Am I making sense to anyone?

I understand you
I believe this is part of what chefs who create "lite" or "unbloated" or "clean" or "naked" (in Garmin's ROMs) are trying to achieve.
I personally like the idea, and hope we see more of them.
My personal favorite ROM of all time was the very first Hyperdragon III

mbarvian said:
I understand you
I believe this is part of what chefs who create "lite" or "unbloated" or "clean" or "naked" (in Garmin's ROMs) are trying to achieve.
I personally like the idea, and hope we see more of them.
My personal favorite ROM of all time was the very first Hyperdragon III
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Up until recently the problem has been that cooks either created loaded ROMs with tons of stuff added to them, or lite ROMs, where they stripped this out.
The issue was however that it is quite easy to strip things out of a ROM. Making CAB packages out of those stripped out files however can be one of the more time consuming tasks and cooks didn't always offer those packages. In addition, CABs which were made available from other sources weren't always packaged in entirety and wouldn't always install.
Cooks have been getting better at this recently however. My new set of ROMS follows these concepts precisely:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=429117

I have been calling and advocating for this too basically since the dawn of UC
Previously I didn't post much under different nick, but I have "put up together" this concept in THIS thread finally, albeit with somewhat misleading "temporary" title, but it is good discussion if anyone is interested.
Granted, few apps have to be cooked-in in order to function properly, but those are really just very few. But as you can read there, most objections against this kind of "real lite" ROMs (where any "upgraedable apps" are NOT cooked-in) come from people who don't understand it, or don't know much about UC or Sashimi (BTW I'm for UC rather than Sashimi because UC is much easier for any newbies), or just don't know/have no clue how it works and are affraid it would make troubles to them if they don't have the same apps cooked-in.
Perhaps any of you could add your input there, since there isn't much sense in starting new thread about basically same thing.
Bengalih, I will test your ROMs with pleasure when I have bit m,ore time (or actually a second Kaiser would be great ).
But I can already give you my sincere congratulations now if you have created such ROMs
I have made ROM based on hang.tuah's ROMeOS (it was going to be an update, but ended in another ROM, LOL - not quite "lite" as I would want it, but I can't change the things that were "always there" now ). I try to steer its users into UC and use "extended packs" for things like dialers, comm managers etc. They'll have best proof that "cooked-in" is *worse* than "installed" soon, when they will have i.e. choice of Opal or Kaiser dialer in the extended pack - which obviously would be impossible if the dialer was cooked-in in the ROM...

@bengalih: your post is what got me to thinking about this again
I'm happy to see that you others share my attitude towards efficiency
I have not completely read thru both of your threads but I suppose what needs to be done is to create a universal standard
The way I see it, this type of system would be beneficial to cooks and end users alike. End users need a minimal variety of options to install these collections and a minimal variety of each basic rom release to install the collections to. Cooks need a simple system to adhere to that requires no more work to put together their collections than the current amount of work they do to create their roms.
Here is a sample proposal (what I'm thinking right now with a minimal knowledge of rom cooking )
A base rom of each flavor could be made available to download. By each flavor, I mean a different rom with each combination of files that must be cooked in to work. I haven't read anything like that before so if there are more than a couple combinations then no more than 4-5 with typcal combinations should be considered.
I need to do some reasearch to learn what benefits and/or caveats are associated with UC and Sashimi. I suppose cooks should be the ones to decide whether to make their collection(s) combatible one installer or the other.

selyb said:
@bengalih: your post is what got me to thinking about this again
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In the future it might just be best to post in the thread about this then. As a topic that has been tread over several times putting additional input into an existing thread would be more effective.
selyb said:
I have not completely read thru both of your threads but I suppose what needs to be done is to create a universal standard
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Click to collapse
Perhaps you should read through the threads that are already out there before staring a new one that re-hashes the same information.
selyb said:
The way I see it, this type of system would be beneficial to cooks and end users alike. End users need a minimal variety of options to install these collections and a minimal variety of each basic rom release to install the collections to. Cooks need a simple system to adhere to that requires no more work to put together their collections than the current amount of work they do to create their roms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good luck trying to get cooks to follow anything you propose. Not that it might not be a brilliant idea, but cooks are going to do their own thing. I decided to take matters into my own hands and cook my own ROMs according to the principles I thought best. I put the ROMs and my principles out there in hopes others will adopt them, but that's the best you can do...
selyb said:
A base rom of each flavor could be made available to download. By each flavor, I mean a different rom with each combination of files that must be cooked in to work. I haven't read anything like that before so if there are more than a couple combinations then no more than 4-5 with typcal combinations should be considered.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, pretty much what I have done already with the HTC and AT&T official 6.1 releases. A base ROM for each with a set of CAB file to customize to your desires.
selyb said:
I need to do some reasearch to learn what benefits and/or caveats are associated with UC and Sashimi. I suppose cooks should be the ones to decide whether to make their collection(s) combatible one installer or the other.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No offense, because I realize I am coming off a bit gruff in this post, but you do need to do alot of research. I agree with alot of what you are saying, but it has been said before (by myself and others). Also, there is no reason that a collection of CAB files wouldn't work with SASHIMI instead of UC or vice-versa. To your own admission, you don't understand how these installers work, but when you do your research you'll see that in essence they are both just installing CAB and XML files (and with SASHIMI the capability for much more).
Again, please don't take anything here as a personal attack. I can see that you are coming off of inspiration from my posts and I don't disagree with your basic ideas. However you will get better reception from all if you do these things:
1) Research what is out there before posting so you don't retread old ground.
2) Don't just "propose" ideas, put them into action. Even the best ideas are unlikely to be adopted unless you put effort into implementing them youself.
I say these to you for your own protection before someone not as nice as me begins to bash you for not doing research

Ok, well, I will quit posting to this thread before someone not so nice does come along.

selyb said:
Ok, well, I will quit posting to this thread before someone not so nice does come along.
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Click to collapse
Heh... well seriously, take some time and learn more of what is currently out there and see where it is lacking.
I generally invite user feedback on my development projects. If you go back through the older threads, and take a look at what I am trying to do with my BRR ROMs, please feel free to comment in there about what additionally you would like to see and why.
Trust me, I very much welcome an open debate about what would be an effective way to do things. I just wanted to burst your bubble a little bit (seeing as you are a newer member) that your aspirations, although maybe valid, are most likely not going to get implemented by a majority of the cooks throughout the site.
I don't mean to shut down your thread, and you should continue posting if you see it as the best place to do so. I just feel that if you contribute to some existing projects that already have momentum then your ideas are more likely to get some attention.

[ROM] Looking for testers.

Looking for possible ROM testers.
I'm currently learning about the all of the potential that the android operating system has and would like to get feedback and reports from other users. I'm looking for one or two testers (if i get quite a few PM's, i will definitely consider changing this, but I want to stick with a captive audience at least in the beginng). The knowledge level can vary, as I'm looking for feedback and checking to see what works/doesn't work. I only have a few specific criteria that I'm looking for in testers which I will note at the bottom.
A little something about my expectations...
I will in no way ever refer to myself as a developer. I'm merely a person that can follow directions, ask the right questions to the right person, and learn along the way. I'm not starting this to make money, to show off any sort of skills that i may posess. I would just like to make this a hobby as other "developers" and users like myself have done. I cannot promise a fast ROM. I cannot promise that it will look the best (at least in the beginning). I can promise I will take in all feedback and suggestions and have some consideration towards them. My biggest reason for testing is to find all the nooks and crannies and make sure they're clean. I do not have 4G here in arizona, so i have no clue if it works or not (It's based off stock so I don't see any reason it shouldn't). Etc etc..
Tester Criteria
I would like at least one user that has not formatted their SD card with ext2/ext3 file system for apps2sd. I will provide help with this if/when needed and I would like to give instructions to verify that it is working.
Someone who has 4G in there area, that also uses social networking.
Some sort of Instant Messanging application, you name it and I'll download it and make a username. It makes it so much easier to talk and get feedback when a conversation can be held. A definite plus is someone that has a headset and knows how to use programs such as Ventrilo or Teamspeak (think xbox live for Windows).
Patience with myself.
PM me and I will get back with you as soon as i can.

I'll help no apps2sd and I have 4g I'm not a dev dev but know a lot of android stuff b

InsertCoin ROM documentation project

Important: The docs are up. The live copy can be found on http://docs.insertcoin-roms.org/ and the Git repository on https://github.com/Manko10/InsertCoin-Docs/. For information on how to participate, see the wiki.
Hi,
This thread is related to the InsertCoin ROM by baadnewz (see this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198684). Since I haven't written 10 postings yet, I can't post to that thread nor create a new one in that forum.
InsertCoin has become a quite popular ROM for the HTC Sensation. It has had 200,000 downloads yet and numbers still raise. With increasing popularity it becomes more and more difficult to get hold of information you need concerning installation, problems, modification, tweaking etc. The result is a very high number of redundant questions on the forums and confused newcomers.
The project
Thus being said, it is time to create a good and centralized knowledgebase which helps new users to dive straight into using InsertCoin, keeps the development thread cleaner and helps to push the project forward since energy can be focused more on implementing new features and fixing bugs than on answering the same questions all over again.
baadnewz attempted to launch a Wiki once, but it ceased and shut down (as well as the whole baadnewz.eu server which was the last more or less valuable resource for help outside XDA-Developers.com).
Now my idea is to create a new official InsertCoin documentation project. I talked to baadnewz and he assured it would be promoted and integrated into the official website once it comes to life. The project I'm heading for is a community-driven one. I would work for it as much as I can but I can't do it alone. I'm not experienced enough in many (especially technical areas) of InsertCoin development and Android development in general. There are many things to learn about InsertCoin. And to be honest: I also don't have the time to write all the stuff by myself. Once I had written everything, it would already be outdated. So this project is only possible if other people participate actively.
How shall the documentation be implemented?
I thought of a project hosted on GitHub. Users can fork the project, make changes and send pull requests. For infrequent submissions, we could also provide a special submission form.
A staging server would then pull the HEAD revision regularly, format it and publish it as a website.
Sounds complicated? But it isn't. Git is pretty much straightforward and also users without technical knowledge can learn it very quickly (yes, there are great graphical tools for it). And of course, the documentation would also include a noob-proof guide to contribution.
But why Git? Why not a Wiki?
A Wiki might seem to be easier, but in fact a Wiki has to be updated regularly. Patches for bugs and security holes have to be applied. Additionally, we had to fight spam. Especially when we use some well known software such as MediaWiki, spam bots would love it. That can be a lot of work.
But the main reason is portability. A Wiki is a Wiki, nothing more. Exporting the contents into other formats would be a tedious process. However, when using plain text files with a simple markup language such as Markdown, they can be exported to all formats we like. Not only can the staging server parse it to HTML, but it can also be exported to PDF, CHM files (does anybody still use these?) and many more formats.
All right, but what is to be documented?
Well, a lot. Things I have though of are
Installation
Where to get InsertCoin ROM?
Which version?
How to flash InsertCoin?
How to upgrade from previous versions?
To wipe or not to wipe (and when)?
Kernels
Which Kernels are there?
Where to get them?
What are the differences?
Advantages/disadvantages of specific Kernels
How to install a new Kernel/revert to stock?
What is a Kernel and why can't I install it via the Market? (dumb question, yes, but important to know)
Known problems
Any reported bugs still present in version X?
How do I report my own bugs?
Why does feature Y not work (and never will)?
Features
Why to choose InsertCoin?
How to submit feature requests?
Requirements
What do I need to run InsertCoin?
Which baseband version do I need?
Where do I get a new baseband version and which one to choose?
Does it work on device X, too?
Which is the oldest supported version for custom kernels?
Add-ons
Which add-ons are there?
Where to get them?
How to flash them?
What to be aware of?
How to get rid of malfunctioning add-ons?
Customization
Which themes are there?
How do I install them?
How do I revert back to the default theme?
How to set up custom boot splash and boot animation?
FAQ
Things users ask all the time
Things users might ask regularly in the future
Milestones
Any planned features for future releases?
How many ROMs to release tomorrow?
Participation
How to submit patches?
How to improve the documentation?
How to pay a round for baad?
General information
What else could be valuable information?
How do I backup and restore my data most efficiently and least time consuming for upgrades which force a full wipe?
etc.
The list goes on. It's up to us how much it'll grow. Make suggestions please. Don't hesitate!
And now you come into play!
Do you think, such a project could become a success? Do you have suggestions, ideas, criticism? Post it here. Please.
Would you like to contribute? Post an answer. You would be one of the glorious pioneers.
If I get enough positive feedback and support by people who want to contribute I will start working on the base system, set up the Git repository, write the staging software and launch the project. If not, it would have been at least worth the effort. But you would contribute and give something back to the community, wouldn't you? Sure, indeed...! ;-)
Cheers
Manko10

Do you think, such a project could become a success? Do you have suggestions, ideas, criticism? Post it here. Please.
Would you like to contribute? Post an answer. You would be one of the glorious pioneers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
of course it'll succeed cause it'll be much easier with plain updated steps (n00b proof )
I would like to contribute if u may allow
THIS IS AWESOME

Of course you can contribute. Everyone is pretty much welcome to do that.

For Baad and InsertCoin itself, I think it would be a perfect success. I myself have been looking for a central resource database for InsertCoin, but always resort to just searching the thread, which is not exactly the most efficient method.
I don't know much on the technical ROM-based side of things, but I am a web developer, so I'm sure I'd be able to help in the deployment of such a website. I also happen to have a vBulletin license I'm not using. If Baad wants to expand his ideas even further and have a sort of official InsertCoin forum, all to himself, I could most definitely lend a hand for that.
I'm thinking large scale here; and upon writing this, further ideas have just popped into my head, but I'll save that for later, but hey, Baad is largely-awesome.
If you happen to have an MSN or Skype, Manko, I'd love to talk to you further

i have a better idea for talking / chatting in a more centralized way: IRC
#baadnwz-roms on freenode

I don't know much on the technical ROM-based side of things, but I am a web developer
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Click to collapse
So am I.
I'm quite sure, baad will help us as good as he can but he is of course very busy with the ROMS. So it's better to have many guys in the project who know more about the technical stuff.

I would try to help too, if You like. If You don't need IC pro's only

We need everyone (IC pros are needed, but not only).
First of all we need people who have fun writing and maintaining (!) good and understandable documentation.

Guys
if you do this - it will be bloody FANTASTIC!
noobproof guide needed badly

Make it so. Sounds like it could become a great resource.

It will, but only if enough people participate.

why not add chatbox on the coming site, isnt much better? 24/7 we can have conversation as like me, am from the philippines, and my time is different to others

Well, the documentation would also be there 24/7. I think for live talking we should better use IRC (#baadnwz-roms on irc.freenode.net). Embedded chats on websites consume a lot of bandwidth.

lol!, i guess so, yeah, maybe irc is much better. anyways, maybe i can contribute some design for future use.

Just jeep in mind that IC is also made by baadnewz for the Desire (and the wildfire too?). I'd like to write some things for the Desire version of IC.

koenvbeek said:
Just jeep in mind that IC is also made by baadnewz for the Desire (and the wildfire too?). I'd like to write some things for the Desire version of IC.
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Click to collapse
yes once the project starts, desire will be there too
for wf i made 2 roms long time ago, and then i sold the phone

Ill contribute if i can I love this rom

wow... this sounds freaking awsome. i would most definately help with coding once the repositories are set up ^_^

I think it would be really beneficial for everyone especially for the folks who are new to the ROM. 600+ pages of comments are a LOT to read through!

Make it so. (with Jean Luc Picard's Voice ) Nice idea.
Would like to contribute sth, though I have a really tight schedule lately...