Music to our ears, Ice Cream Sandwich Source Code to be launched Soon!

Although I may not be a developer nor capable of understanding all the various terms and locations for what is used and needed, I still know good things when I hear it. I was recently tipped off to a post that contained a bunch of stuff that literally means nothing to me, but the world to the devs. There was apparently a time very recently where Kernel.org was down. This is where much of what the developers use comes from alongside the AOSP git servers. Issues really started to become present when Gingerbread Source Code was released. Causing stability issues and making it nearly impossible for some devs to pull the files they needed to be able to work with. Now the Gingerbread source has been moved to Google serves. There are new instruction for how to snag the stuff you are after and you can find them below in the notice.

So what, who cares. That is what you might be thinking about now. for the devs it means the world. If they have issues getting the source to work with then we all suffer because they can’t create, modify or fix up any custom ROMs. Getting things put back to normal and shifting servers around will help provide a more consistent experience. In turn, when Ice Cream Sandwich source code is released, no one should have any issues picking it up and getting to work with it.

Wait, did he just say “Ice Cream Sandwich Source Code?” I sure did. In a small part of the post by Dan Morrill, A Google/Android Engineer, he states that, “We plan to release the source for the recently announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it’s available on devices.” So not the most exciting of news, but it should mean that once the Galaxy Nexus is launched and available for purchase then source should go live. If all the rumors are correct, that should be right around November 10th. We can all only hope, I am so ready to start seeing ICS landing on other devices..

Hi!

As you know, like many other projects the Android Open-Source Project was
affected by the recent kernel.org downtime. So, we’re pleased to let you
know that the Gingerbread source code is now available again, and AOSP git
servers are back online.

Even before the kernel.org downtime, it was clear that AOSP was sometimes
taxing kernel.org’s git infrastructure. When we did the Gingerbread source
release, for example, load due to AOSP made part of kernel.org unusable for
several days. This isn’t fair to kernel.org’s staff or the community, so for
some time we’ve been preparing our own git hosting on Google servers.

We were finishing up just as kernel.org experienced their downtime, so the
Gingerbread source is now available on Google’s servers. Accordingly, the
git URLs have changed.

Here are the instructions to access the new git servers:

– You need to get the latest version of the repo tool:
curl https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/googlesource/git-repo/repo > ~/bin/repo
– You need to initialize a new repository:
repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b
android-2.3.7_r1
– The full instructions are at
http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

There are a few limitations to be aware of:

– Our priority has been getting the main source code mirrors back online,
so for the moment gitweb source browsing and Gerrit Code Review are still
unavailable.
– We are now working on bringing AOSP’s Gerrit Code Review site back up,
and hope to be able to say something here soon.
– It might be a little while longer before gitweb comes back,
unfortunately, since Gerrit Code Review is the next priority.
– To reiterate, these servers contain only the ‘gingerbread’ and ‘master’
branches from the old AOSP servers. We plan to release the source for the
recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it’s available on devices.
– As these new servers are, well, new, there may be hiccups if we
encounter unexpected issues. However we’re keeping a close eye on them and
will respond to any issues as quickly as possible.

Finally, we’d like to send a huge “thank-you” to the kernel.org community
and Oregon State University Open-Source Lab staff. They’ve done an
incredible job hosting the AOSP source code mirror and Gerrit Code Review
for nearly 3 years. Without them, it’s safe to say that AOSP would not be
where we are today.

Thanks, and happy coding!

– Dan

Source: Google Groups