Android Builders Summit | Presentations

Using the Debian Package Manager to Assemble Android-Based Mobile Phone Software Systems

Date: Thursday, April 14th
Time: 1:30pm
Location: Sakura B/C

A mobile phone manufacturer like Sony Ericsson has hundreds of customers -- network operators -- that all have their specific requirements on the phones they want to buy. These requirements include which applications they want bundled, how the applications should behave, which ringtones and settings to preload, and so on. Unfortunately, Android's standard build system doesn't scale to hundreds of such configurations per device. Sony Ericsson treats the pieces of the Android platform as components of a complete Android-based mobile phone software system, and packages each component into a Debian package. Different software configurations are realized by selecting which packages to install into a temporary chroot jail on the PC, and from this flashable image files or other interesting artifacts can be created. This not only enables developers to create software customized for any customer's needs out of a single build of the Android platform but also makes it easy for people and systems outside the software development organization to contribute phone content. This talk will elaborate on why this was necessary for us, how we implemented it, and what went wrong along the way.

Magnus Bäck (Sony Ericsson)

Magnus has worked with software configuration management, build management, and development tools at Sony Ericsson's main development hub in Lund, Sweden, since 2004 when he graduated from Lund Intsitute of Technology. Initially working with the company's proprietary mobile phone platform, his focus shifted to Android in early 2009 when his main task became to figure out how to get hundreds of software developers to thrive in a new Linux environment with Git-based source control -- and how to actually make useful mobile phone software from their work. Magnus currently spends his time with the configurability of Sony Ericsson's software platform, branching strategies for efficient parallel work, and the occasional makefile and Python hacks.