[Android Software Development] 3ndymion:
INITIALIZING YOUR BUILD ENVIRONMENT

-For me, this was the hardest part of the whole process, as there wasn't a lot of help on how to do this for Fedora with KDE. Whatever few guides for Fedora I found out there were usually missing something here & there. My goal is to change that & help everyone. I've gone through this multiple times now, including multiple reinstalls of Fedora 18 from scratch.

-You'll need to install lots of drivers & libraries.

NOTE: Use Apper, the software management program, to look up drivers & libs. Apper will show you many different files that have the name that you typed in, whereas yum won't. Personally, I like to look things up with Apper so I can get lots of hits, & then actually download them by typing them in manually with yum. Yum shows you what it's actually doing behind the scenes while it's downloading things, whereas Apper doesn't. If yum gets stuck & hangs, you can actually see what's going on, whereas Apper won't show you anything & will just leave you wondering what's going on.

NOTE: I have found it to be a good idea to always look for the development (-devel) version of anything that you have to install. Not everything has a development version, but some do. For example, if you look up "flex" in Apper, you'll see that there's also a "flex-devel". Be sure to download them both.

-Here is what I went by:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HOWTO_Setup_Android_Development

http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Main_Page

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Build_for_maguro

-I used the lists on the fedora page, & I also used the lists of required packages for Ubuntu 10.04 & 12.04. I chose to try a build for Samsung Galaxy Nexus, since that's what I have. While going through the Ubuntu lists, you must keep in mind that some of these packages don't exist for Fedora, & many others do exist with slightly different names. It is best to spend some time & look them up 1 at a time using Apper. For example, typing "libxml2-utils" into Apper shows nothing, but typing in "libxml2" shows results. Finally, whatever you still can't find, you must google search it. For example, google search = "fedora libxml2-utils" You'll get clues & answers from what other people have already found about them. I mainly used the Ubuntu lists of necessary libs to download. So, without further ado, here's everything that I did that works for me...

$ sudo yum install git gnupg gnupg2 flex flex-devel bison bison-devel gperf gcc gcc-c++ make automake kernel-devel zip curl zlib zlib-devel glibc glibc-devel ncurses ncurses-devel xulrunner xulrunner-devel libX11 libX11-common libX11-devel xorg-x11-proto-devel readline readline-devel mesa-libGL mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU

NOTE: You won't need mingw32 & tofrodos.

$ sudo yum install python-markdown libxml2 libxml2-devel libxslt libxslt-devel perl perl-devel perl-Switch SDL SDL-devel wxGTK wxGTK-devel squashfs-tools pngcrush schedtool

NOTE: If you installed Fedora with the options for development programs, than some of these will be installed already. This list may be a slight bit of overkill, but I purposely wrote down everything anyway, so that way nobody misses anything. I went through hell when figuring this out, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

NOTE: If you've been doing everything logged in as superuser, be sure to exit su when you're not installing things anymore. If you create directories as root user, you won't have permissions to access them under your own name, unless you manually change the permissions. Other permissions issues can arise too.

-After all this, it's just a matter of installing the directories & repo, & following the remaining directions on the CyanogenMod Wiki build guide page. I wanted to sync up with the Jellybean branch, so as an example, I set my directories up like this:

mkdir Android-Development/Builds/bin
mkdir Android-Development/Builds/CM10.1_Jellybean

-Whenever I download the repo command, I do it like this:

curl https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/googlesource/git-repo/repo > ~/Android-Development/Builds/bin/repo

-You'll need to add this to your global PATH as well, so be sure to do that, then log out & back in again, or reboot to make it active. Do that, & then continue.

-Then, I go inside the CM10.1_Jellybean folder to do the repo init. (Get ready for repo sync. That takes hours!!!)

-That's pretty much it. : ) Be sure to read through the sites & all their instructions & guides to help you understand everything.

!!!WARNING!!! Here is what I mentioned all the way at the beginning. Please don't forget the most important thing of all: those damn hidden ".directory" files. Any time you change the folder views in Dolphin File Manager, it places a hidden ".directory" file in that folder. THESE HIDDEN FILES WILL DESTROY YOUR BUILD!!! I went through hell with this, trying to figure out what was going on. I always set up the Android folders to show in "details" view mode, so that they're easier to see. Every time I tried to build, it would build for 5 or 10 minutes, & then fail, citing errors in java. I eventually realized that the ".directory" files were the cause of all the problems.

If you change the folder views, you need to get rid of those hidden ".directory" files. You'll have to do it in terminal. A good way to do it is by using the "find" command to find them all, & then pipe the output of that into the "rm" command to remove (delete) them all. ("find --help", "man find", google "linux commands find")

The "find" command can find whatever you're looking for in the current directory, & in all of its sub-directories as well. With the "rm" command, you can also use the "v" option. "V" stands for "verbose". It will show you everything that is being done, as it's being done. As an example, here's how I do it on my computer:

$ cd ~/Android-Development/Builds/CM10.1_Jellybean
$ find -name .directory -exec rm -v '{}' \;

That will find all of the ".directory" files & delete them all. It works pretty fast too. With the "v" option, it will show you what's going, while it's happening, as well. So, if you're like me & think that it's much easier to see huge lists of folders in "details" view mode, feel free to set it for the current directory & all sub-directories as well. However, DON'T FORGET TO DELETE all of the ".directory" files before you start building, or your build WILL FAIL!!!

Well, as you can see, you can customize some things to your liking. There's plenty of learning involved, so be ready to spend lots of time with everything. Good luck, & have fun!!! :D :D :D