[Android Software Development] CosmicDan:
Yeah, connor's aapt for linux is slightly newer than the windows binary though. But your plurals tip helped, at least with Phone - have not tried framework-res yet.

I believe so too, and I just realized how. Start by replacing libandroid_runtime.so which presents the Netd bootloop, but you can still run commands from adb shell. So if you look at boot process common to all devices (init.rc in ramdisk), you can try to manually start the binaries in order they appear (servicemanager, vold, netd, debuggerd, etc.) and see what error it throws. In a first case, replace libandroid_runtime.so and reboot, then on the loop (stuck on kernel screen) just manually execute adb shell /system/bin/surfaceflinger (first binary from init.rc we get a crash on) and we see this error:

link_image[1916]: 713 could not load needed library 'libsurfaceflinger.so' for 'surfaceflinger' (link_image[1916]: 713 could not load needed library 'libandroid_runtime.so' for 'libsurfaceflinger.so' (reloc_library[1331]: 713 cannot locate '_ZN7android12AssetManager12addAssetPathERKNS_7String8EPPv'...))CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE

...now you'd think we need libsurfaceflinger.so from MIUI to fix that, which is probably true, but sometimes it's not that easy and you dont see any mention of a new lib. So you either/both (1) do a full text search on the MIUI lib folder for that long _ZN7 method/function it needs, and copy the new MIUI lib, and/or (2) full text-search the base CM10 lib folder for that method/function and find it's being caused by a CM10 lib that wont work with MIUI's libs.

Make sense? Hope so :P either way, I'm going through this long process and will hopefully get a list up soon of all the lib files we can use natively from MIUI (not CM10) which may eliminate some of this smali nonsense. If I am successful, that is.

The scripts I use are basically the same as patchROM, they just use a long bash script and .patch files to modify the smali's of stock ROM's. It could be a good source for knowing exactly what MIUI changes, but it also presents a sh!t load of rejects when you do it with a CM base (non-stock) ROM, since CM10 of course has a lot of smali differences compared to a pure AOSP build.

EDIT: Dude! If you copy MIUI's android_runtime.so and libandroidfw.so, it boots! Mind you, I have no wallpaper nor status bar, and touchscreen doesn't work..... but still, this is good progress. I'll make a full post with details on a good base-set of MIUI libs that work for me on CM10 soon, hopefully we will fix the Browser (and many many more) this way without needing smali patches :D

EDIT2: Not possible I'm afraid, unless you have an OMAP device then you might have luck. I replaced the following files with MIUI:

libandroid_runtime.so
libandroidfw.so
libwebcore.so
libsurfaceflinger.so
libgui.so
libui.so

And maybe libEGL, libGLES*.so, can't remember. That resulted in a system that booted 1/5th of the time with constant gralloc errors, due to my drivers (Adreno20x/Snapdragon) no working well with the OMAP-based libs. The furthest I could ever get was the lockscreen and dragging the lock, but then it rebooted. I never got that far since, only happened one time (out of graphic memory errors).

So best forget it, not happening for CM10 unless you have same graphics hardware as a Nexus device :( Might work with CM9 and ICS builds though, for instance the Arc S has same Snapdragon and board - 90% similar to other Xperia 2011 devices - but ICS is boring.