[Desire Android Development] Droidzone:
Note to Mods..

Kindly dont move it to the General section. This thread is about Rom development, and discusses a serious issue about the future of development in the Desire section, and whether we devs should continue to work here..

Some of us are getting irritated at this absolute proliferation of "me-too" roms..Roms which are apparently exact copies of others out there, taking all the files from them, deleting a few files (cut-copy-paste), and releasing it as the new "dev"'s own work..

In this context, I'd like to propose a list of questions a wanna-be Rom dev should ask himself/herself before starting a Rom thread here.

Can you smali and baksmali files individually?

Are you familiar with Edify and Amend?

Do you know about Kernel ramdisk loading, bootclasses and MTD layouts?

Are you familiar with adb and fastboot commands and can you offer support to endusers who have problem with this?

Can you debug Edify code and built an updater-script from scratch without wholly relying on the dsixda kitchen?

Do you know how to modify frameworks, system apps and jars and debug their errors?

Are you familiar with how to port roms between devices? (applicable only if you intend to release a port)

Have you significantly modified a Rom to add new and useful content?

Have you contributed uniquely to the Rom, and not just made a cocktail of features already made by devs?

Can you write/at least understand bash scripts?

Can you compile your own kernel from source code?

The items in Bold are more important..

If the answer to most of these questions is Yes, go ahead, we'd love to have your Rom here, as you most certainly have what it takes to release a finished product.. If not, think thrice before posting a Rom. We cant prevent you from posting in the Dev section, but be forewarned that it might be an invitation for flaming! If your purpose in posting a Rom is to learn development yourself, and you've made a Rom which uses >=80 % of another Dev's work, it may be better to release it as a "ROM-Mod" and work on it further,.

Another suggestion is to use the prefix [ROM] for something which is built originally, and [Rom-MOD] for others with minimal changes from a source Rom, and the latter should give proper credits to the source...

Before posting a new Rom, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the difference between your Rom and the Base?

Have you done active development, other than delete a few files/mix a few files/themes?

Is there a significant difference between your Rom and other Roms out there/your source, in terms of new features added?

The following is a list of items which are not considered development:

Using another Dev's original ROM as your base, where you :

Only add mods from yet another developer/rom

Do not include any actual development done by you in the form of code in bash scripts/updater-script/compiled binaries which add some new functionality to the original Rom

Only mix the source Rom with themes/apps created by another developer

Only remove/add some apps from the source rom, in the process reducing its size

In case the difference between the base Rom and the new Rom is very marginal, but includes a significant development on the part of the new dev, the change from base rom should be clearly documented as part of a changelog attached in the thread OP.

If your purpose in starting a Rom thread is to study to develop, you can clear questions related to development by using the Developer Google plus Huddle maintained here

What do you guys think? Should we suggest to the mod team to append this to the list of rules for posting? Feel free to add your suggestions/criticism/opinion