Another status update for Project Durden!

We’re currently working on the kernel – pulling in the CPU speed/voltage settings from DroidMod 1.0, and beating DMUpdater in to shape to make distribution of the ROM in update.zip format prettier when we decide it’s ready for release. SPRecovery already supports flashing update.zips, so we’re likely to still be using it by the time the ROM is released. We’ve been using a development version of DMUpdater internally to aid in dev snapshot distribution.

Current list of known issues:
Auto-focus does not work. On initial inspection, it seems that this is a configuration issue, and not a driver issue.
Voice directions in navigation don’t work. Text to speech is working, so this is probably a missing permission or configuration error.
Charging on USB isn’t working. Oddly enough, AC charging works.

If you can stand to live without those three things, there are dev snapshots floating around on IRC that you can try out. Let us know what you think!

We’re at a point where the ROM is very near to being stable. We’re having issues with tethering causing the phone to reboot, but for the most part everything is working fairly well. For those interested in building the ROM from source to get an early glimpse of what it will look like, here’s what you’ll need to know:

First, read the guide for downloading the AOSP source code (you can swap the repo init command with the one below now, or do it later): http://source.android.com/source/download.html

You can avoid having to run adb as root by adding a udev rule; directions here: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html
Ubuntu 10.04 users: the udev syntax changed, use: SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="22b8", MODE="0666"

Durden uses SquashFS and LZMA for kernel/ramdisk compression, so you will need to grab tools for those. In the future, we’d like to make these prebuilts, but for now just install them on your system. For Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt-get install squashfs-tools lzma

Downloading the Durden source can be done with the following repo commands:
$ repo init -u git://git.droiddev.org/platform/manifest.git
$ repo sync

In addition to the Durden source, you will need two patches that we’ve submitted to AOSP, but have not yet been reviewed:
$ repo download hardware/ti/omap3 15700/1
$ repo download external/sqlite 15724/1

To pull the proprietary Motorola and Google files you’ll need off your phone (it must be running a Froyo ROM):
$ cd vendor/droidmod
$ ./extract-files.sh
$ cd ../..

Set up a buildspec.mk:
$ cat > buildspec.mk << EOF
USE_CCACHE := true
DROIDMOD_WITH_MOTOROLA_APPS := true
DROIDMOD_WITH_GOOGLE := true
DROIDMOD_WITH_ZOMG := true
DROIDMOD_WITHOUT_SQUASHFS := true
EOF

Every time you open a new terminal, you will have to run these commands to configure your environment:
$ . build/envsetup.sh
$ lunch droidmod_sholes-eng

Now you’re ready to run the build!
$ make otapackage

If you can live without wifi, deleting /system/lib/modules/tiwlan_drv.ko will stop the reboots caused by the bad tethering config.
UPDATE: Tethering is now working.

The most commonly asked question is whether Durden will overwrite recovery. The answer is no; while a recovery.img is built from source and included in the ROM (as recovery-from-boot.p), the recovery image is not actually flashed when the phone boots. We’re still working on making that recovery image useful, so it isn’t recommended for general use.

If you’d like to make changes and contribute back to the project, we use Gerrit at http://review.droiddev.org/, and the process for uploading changes is the same as for AOSP. You can read the guide to contributing to AOSP here:
http://source.android.com/source/submit-patches.html

I wanted to post an update to let everyone know what is going on, and why the site has been down lately. We’ve got a really cheap (read: free) NS which has been going down, so it’s not actually our website that is down. We’ll be moving to a new NS later today, so hopefully this issue will go away. There have been rumors floating around that it’s indicative of the project being dead – this is definitely not true. We’re still here!

We’ve also purchased a new Xen server for hosting our Gerrit server and git repos. The old server is a dinky VPS that we got a good deal on from a reseller, but we outgrew its capacity quickly. We’re in the process of migrating to the new server, but we’re trying to get the kernel working before we make the official switch so that our development doesn’t get delayed by housekeeping tasks. Our billing period for the old server ends on the 19th, so we have a deadline of 11 days for this.

The Durden project still needs some kernel patches, but the ROM itself is stable. I’ve been running it with a “stock” kernel without any issues since Friday.

SirPsychoS is back, and is currently getting up to speed with the changes since he’s been gone. We’re glad to have him back, and are expecting to see great things in the coming weeks.