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Building Android Source with minimal apps

+2 votes
1,104 views

Is it possible to build the Android Source with only the essential applications? I have downloaded the Android Source and after compiling the app folder seems to have a lot of apks that I feel the project can live without (e.g. Calender.apk, Contacts.apk, LiveWallpapers.apk and there are others).

If this is possible, which/where Make should I modify to remove the inclusion of these APKs?

posted Sep 19, 2013 by Meenal Mishra

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2 Answers

+1 vote

You can modify the /BUILD/TARGET/PRODUCT/GENERIC_NO_TELEPHONY.MK and remove any application's package entry, from tag- PRODUCT_PACKAGES := ... ,which ever applications you don't want in your build.

In Same context, for your knowledge:-
1. All apps are placed in /PACKAGES/APPS/
2. Each app directory contains a ANDROID.MK file which contain a tag LOCAL_PACKAGE_NAME := ...
3. These packages names are registered in /BUILD/TARGET/PRODUCT/GENERIC_NO_TELEPHONY.MK file and with tag PRODUCT_PACKAGES := ...
4. If you don't want any of these app to be included simply remove the entry of it from above GENERIC_NO_TELEPHONY.MK file.
5. If you want to add your app to be included for all builds also add entry of your LOCAL_PACKAGE_NAME in this file.
6. If you want to add your app to only some selected builds than only do not add entry of your app in GENERIC_NO_TELEPHONY.MK but in your particular build's vendor specific Android.mk file with extending tag PRODUCT_PACKAGES := ...

answer Sep 19, 2013 by Naveena Garg
Thanks for the detailed explanation. It was very helpful. I have modified the generic_no_telephony.mk file and removed all packages apart from Settings. The effect of this change was that the 'out/target/product/nitrogen6x/' is much much smaller in size. However I am yet to find out what the end result is once I move this compile to the actual device.
One thing that I tried before you replied to my question was the following:-> Without any modification, when Android was running, the power supply was showing current usage to be just under 1 amp on the desktop power supply.
-> I manually removed the redundant APKs from the /system/app/ (from the SD card) and tried rebooting the development board. What I found was that the current usage peaked to about 2A and the freescale chip was hot. It seems as if the Android framework was trying to run the APK's however, as they were manually removed, there was some kind of infinite loop taking place.
So my question is if one were to remove these APK's manually do we need to change any other settings to indicate to Android to stop running them?
We are using the Boundary Devices iMX6 development board
http://boundarydevices.com/products/sabre-lite-imx6-sbc/
http://boundarydevices.com/android-jellybean-on-i-mx6-with-no-disclaimers/
commented Sep 20, 2013 by anonymous
Sometimes i also remove the app from device at runtime from /SYSTEM/APPS/ after rooting the device but i did not notice any heating/crashing as i always try on high end devices like Nexus 7/Nexus 4 etc.So i don't have any idea about it, that what could be the problem, due to which after removing apps at run time your board is experiencing issue you mentioned. So you will need to see logs and also dig in to AOSP code.
commented Sep 20, 2013 by anonymous
+1 vote

Would you know about the following? I have read on google that if we want to run our application in kiosk manner, we have to essentially replace launcher2 application. Have you done this?
I managed to to compile Android source with minimal applications and then created a SD card (essentially copied the out/..../system directory however Android got stuck at the bootanimation screen! Will continue trying other things.

answer Sep 20, 2013 by Naveena Garg
yes, Android launcher is targeted for mobile/tablet devices, if you want to make it effective for any other purpose like kioske or anything else, you can modify/replace the launcher2 app.We also had created some Launchers.
commented Sep 20, 2013 by anonymous
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