building for pandaboard ES

[Tony Jones]

Hi.  I asked this initially on the PandaBoard group but got only 2 views and 0 replies.    I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers to clear up my obvious confusion about the instructions and get a build going for my PandaBoard (ideally master).   

I know Linux/git well but I've got zero Android experience.

Thanks!

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I'm trying to build android for my Pandaboard ES following the instructions at http://source.android.com/source/building.html

I'm wondering if maybe there are some better dedicated panda instructions available as I'm finding the above rather confusing?

1) If I 'repo init' branch 'android-4.1.2_r2' I can see a 'device/ti/panda' folder and lunch gives me the options "1. full-eng  2. full_x86-eng 3. vbox_x86-eng 4. full_grouper-userdebug 5. mini_armv7a_neon-userdebug 6. mini_armv7a-userdebug 7. full_wingray-userdebug 8. full_crespo-userdebug 9. full_maguro-userdebug 10. full_panda-userdebug" 

http://source.android.com/source/building-running.html says "All build targets take the form BUILD-BUILDTYPE, where the BUILD is a codename referring to the particular feature combination" but I'm not seeing a "panda-eng" only "panda-userdebug".

2) If I 'repo init' master there is no 'device/ti' folder but I can see it here: https://android.googlesource.com/device/ti/panda/+/master

3) http://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html says "In addition, PandaBoard a.k.a. "panda" can be used in the jb-mr1-dev-plus-aosp branch, but is considered experimental"  and then lower on the page "Official binaries for the supported devices can be downloaded from Google's Nexus driver page" (https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers) but it says "archived for reference only" and they all refer to "android master".

[Dave Turvene]

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:21:08 PM UTC-4, Tony Jones wrote:

Hi.  I asked this initially on the PandaBoard group but got only 2 views and 0 replies.    I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers to clear up my obvious confusion about the instructions and get a build going for my PandaBoard (ideally master).   

I know Linux/git well but I've got zero Android experience.

 I worked on a Pandaboard ES about 9 months ago.  At the time I found the linaro releases more stable and better packaged.  See

https://releases.linaro.org/latest/android/panda/

Thoughts reviewing my notes/scripts:

* Use linaro_android_build_cmds.sh the first time.  It downloads and builds everything but is really slow.  Pull out the pieces you need after that.

* There are a bunch of proprietary driver packages, use install_binaries.sh to get them 

* Linaro uses uboot, different than android bootloader (but really nice if you're into bootloaders.)

* Use linaro-android-media-create to flash the sdcard but read instructions because they use tar.bz2 files

* If you're running headless, many target processes will crash.  adb shell stop surfaceflinger and zygote to stablize

* the board will suspend when no activity, there's a script called disablesuspend.sh that will prevent this 

* Use wifi instead of wired ethernet for adb (instructions on linaro wiki)

* make sure you have a serial port connected during boot up