[G Pad 8.3 General] roirraW "edor" ehT:
I only learned what I did to make the stock ROM and debloat zips by taking apart [MENTION=5868929]hsbadr[/MENTION] 's example JasmineROM and his optional debloat zip made for the VS985 Verizon G3. I examined the contents, followed his examples for the ROM and debloating and adjusted them for the VK810. None of what I've done requires Linux, Java or the Android Studio and I haven't used any of them for this purpose anyway. About the closest in real "deving" I've done is when I implemented [MENTION=2684188]autoprime[/MENTION] 's 3MinitBattery mod for the Sprint Galaxy S2 which did require Java and some tools, although that was still minor relatively speaking.

I've never compiled a ROM from source (tried a few times), nor done tweaking of stock ROMs outside of the debloating, but I've always offered that as an option, so even that wasn't built in.

So I don't have any links to give you. If I did I'd probably have to Google for them anyway. :)

If you look inside any of my debloat zips and dig into the slight folder structure you'll see two files:

updater-binary

and

updater-script

Leave updater-binary alone.

Load updater-script in a text editor and it should be fairly self-explanatory so you can adjust to your needs. Also [MENTION=6795073]joshua70448[/MENTION] makes a neat online tool for generating your own debloat zip although it'll only cover what we're already aware of, and when I downgraded back to KitKat I realized my debloat zips only take into account Lollipop's still relatively new folder structure for apps, which is different than it was pre-Lollipop. Pre-Lollipop all the apps in system/app, for example, would all just be in that folder whereas on Lollipop and above, every app has it's own subfolder.

If I get enough motivation one of these days I'll add back in the KitKat debloating necessary to the debloat zips.

I use NotePad++ on Windows to edit the updater-script. I then move the original debloat zip to my Android device (can be any one, doesn't have to be the one the zip is made for), use X-plore File Manager to open the zip (not extract it), delete the updater-script out of the zip, and copy the new updater-script to the zip - all within X-plore.

I have my debloat zips and separate unzipped updater-scripts for each debloat zip in a folder in my Windows OneDrive, so it's easy to keep my latest edits backed up, and get the latest files onto my Android devices using the OneDrive app.

:D "Get busy living or get busy breaking stuff!" Wasn't that a movie quote? ;)

Aigh. Google or search XDA for "WindowsLGFirmwareExtract-1.2.5.0-Release", assuming you're using Windows. It requires .NET 3.5 and I have noted you have to run it as Admin although it may have worked fine for me without running as Admin.

You should be able to figure out how to use that to extract a KDZ. I think I've extracted TOTs with it too. TOTs have more partitions than KDZs, including a relatively massive one (once decompressed) called userdata.img so you probably generally don't want to extract TOTs, or not all of the partitions in them.

Then look inside one of my ROM zips and you'll see the various partition img files in there, and you can look at the updater-script in there as well.

Something to keep in mind though is that I was more ignorant back then when I made the 35A and then 36B ROM zips for the VK810. I followed [MENTION=5868929]hsbadr[/MENTION] 's example and in this case that worked fine, but [MENTION=2941286]xdabbeb[/MENTION] taught me a lot more about "Bootstacks" - a collection of a bunch of the partition imgs, but not the main system.img (ROM) nor boot.img (kernel). In other words if I knew then what I know now, about some of the additional partitions which [MENTION=5868929]hsbadr[/MENTION] didn't include in his ROM so I didn't include in my ROM, which are recommended and indeed sometimes even necessary for everything to work exactly correct. The most obvious example is when 5.1.1 came out for the VS985 G3. It was build 35B. When 35B came out the rest of us didn't know that in order to use the 35B modem.img we had to also use the 35B sbl1.img. Nothing catastrphic happened if you didn't have the 35B sbl1, just the modem didn't work and you had no signal.

Then [MENTION=2941286]xdabbeb[/MENTION] posted his VS985 ROM and also three Bootstack zips, one for 12B KitKat, one for 24B Lollipop 5.0.x and 35B for Lollipop 5.1.x and it's also for Marshmallow 6.x.

I don't tweak the partition imgs at all. I don't even include SuperSU, you may have noticed you have to flash the SuperSU.zip from recovery after flashing the ROM. Minimal effort for the most gain. :)

I delete the old partition .img files out of the zip right there on an Android device and then copy the new ones over to the zip just like I do for the debloat zips.

There are other ways but this works and I'm just too lazy to bother discovering those other ways since I hardly even get motivated enough for what little ROM "work" I do. :) To be honest, the debloat zips are the most tedious just as far as figuring out *what* to debloat, what's what, etc. And then finding out what new bloat they include in newer OTAs.

Lastly, do you know what TL;DR is? Also referred to as Teal Deer? This post of mine was a good example. The meaning is below the following picture:

Means Too Long; Didn't Read. :)