[Android Software/Hacking General [Developers Only]] amarullz:
About AROMA Installer

Background

Android has an advanced system for installing the OS and updates, unlike other mobile OS's that distribute the contents of the OS in static ROM image(s), Android distributes the OS and updates in a plain .zip file that contains all of the packages, files, and the updater for processing the installation.

The updater splits in 2 types, the binary (update-binary) and script (updater-script), while the binary is an executable file, and the script was a configuration script that tells the binary executable what to do.

But this advanced technology never expanded into its highest potential ability. The update-binary was simply the linux executable wrote in C that runs in root mode, and can do anything to your system; including accessing the Display FrameBuffer, accessing keys and the touch screen, set vibrate, run programs, parse files, load png(s) and .zip's, and read and write to the filesystem.

The old update-binary

only supported a few functions

that can controlled only by the updater-script to instal the files. It didn't have a single function that allowed the installer to interact with the user. There is a program called "yesno" that shows a "Yes" or "No" interface, but it wasn't enough to create a more customizable updater.

Now with AROMA Installer update-binary, all of this limitation is gone, and this advanced technology is expanded to the highest level of its pontential.​

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What is AROMA Installer

"AROMA" was taken from Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language) and it means "Scent", but it is also an abbreviation of "AMARULLZ ANDROID ROM MANIFESTATION". It is an advanced update-binary for Android that contains many features like Wizard Installation, Touch User Interface (AROMA UI), Customizable Packages, System Inspecting, Themeable, and User Interactive. All release versions will have "flower" codenames, for example, the 1st version is codenamed "Anggrek", which mean "Orchid".​

How AROMA Installer Works

How can it work in recovery mode, and how can it so smooth when it scrolls? It works because I hired Chuck Norris to force the recovery to run the installer, and the phone is too afraid to show any lag :cool:.

No, seriously, when the user selects the .zip file to install it, the recovery will extract the update-binary and run it with a few arguments. All processes are handled by the update-binary, and the recovery will only show the information passed by update-binary via a custom pipe. The great thing is that the update-binary can do anything if we can code it in C/C++, but not all people can easily play with C/C++. Its also not very effective or fun to compile it every time we need to change the process. That's why the custom script is used in AROMA Installer, it is simply edify scripting that is used as the normal updater-script, but with expanded functions available.

It wasn't a simple thing to archive something like this, because the update-binary is simply the "linux executable" that doesn't even support dynamic links of libraries, basic drawing functions like drawrect, drawline, and I don't think it OpenGL can be included in it's binary. It runs on it's own. Even User Interface was wrote from scratch to manipulate directly into the display framebuffer, user input was read directly from the raw kernel input device, png and .zip was read with a static link library, and the configuration was parsed in it's own program. It is the result of one full month of developing, but you can learn it instantly, without any need to know how to manage memory usage and pointers.

The AROMA Installer will read, parse, and run the script commands to show it's UI, calculate partition sizes, create, read, and write temporary prop files, set & get variables, do simple integer comparisons and math sequences, do the if else or inline if conditions, configure the UI color scheme, configure rom information, and much more.

Because it was very complicated and needed a lot of time to develope, did I earn some reason to get donations?.​

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Flowchart How It Works

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more at amarullz.com [+]​

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