[ONE Android Development] uudruid74:
Flashing WildLife

Flashing Instructions - Full ROM

Step 1 - Backup

If you don't have a backup program, you can grab a really fast and free one, Backup+. XDA Forum | My Mirror - Direct Download. Be sure you keep the APK on your Internal Storage so you can install it easily and restore the rest of your apps. Also, I strongly recommend you copy your internal storage (or at least the backup directory) onto a PC, a harddrive, a flash drive, or cloud storage such as Google Drive. Get it off your phone and make it safe.

Step 2 - Boot into Recovery

Even if your reboot menu doesn't have a Recovery option, you can always just hold down the Volume Down button when your phone boots and you're good. I recommend Philz Recovery from this XDA thread or you can download the exact ZIP I use.

Step 3 - Wipe Carefully

This step is what is known as a "clean flash". Do not perform this step if you are flashing an upgrade or addition. If this is the first time you've flashed this ROM, you want the full version and you want to do it cleanly. Failure to clean flash leads to odd problems. For example, Agent stopped reading my calendar, or my Camera plugins would start to disappear.

You do not want to do a Factory wipe or anything like that or you'll lose all your data. Do not format /data. Here's where it gets confusing. Many recovery systems treat /data and Internal Storage as if they were separate partitions, but they are not. Your internal storage is on the same partition as /data. If you are from Windows, image your /system is your C: drive, and /data (where your apps are at) and your internal storage are both on D:. Your recovery has a specific wipe designed to safely wipe /data without wiping out your internal storage by erase directories individually, yet automatically.

Philz makes this simple and direct. Select Wipe and Format Options, then select Clean to Install a New ROM. Confirm the wipe, and you are ready to go.

Step 4 - Flash the ZIP

This is pretty easy. Select the option to flash it, find it on your device, and away it goes. If you downloaded the file to your PC (or wiped your internal storage and now have no files on your phone), you can use the "sideload" option you see in the menu. Just plug in a USB cable and type: adb sideload Aardvark.zip This does require that you have adb drivers set up on your PC, but you needed that to unlock your bootloader, right? More tips like this in a later post!

Step 5 - Flash your Gapps

The most important part of Gapps is making sure its for Lollipop. The more up to date, the better. You should download the smallest GApps that fits your needs, just so you don't have to download so much. You can specifically control which Gapps are installed with a config file. Just drop the gapps-config.txt into the same directory as your gapps ZIP file. This file can even delete crufty Cyanogen apps that you don't need or want (you have better ones from Play store right?) and reduce bloat considerably.

About the Gapps Config | OpenGapps is the recommended Gapps package | Newer Sources for Gapps | My gapps-config.txt ... note: you might not want to use my config unless you want almost all your Cyanogen apps to go away. When the system comes up, you won't have a file manager to install Backup+. I install it with "adb install BackupPlus.apk" or if its on the phone, you can log in with adb shell and then install with pm install $PWD/BackupPlus.apk

TIP: If you have Chrome installed from Gapps, you can open it and type "file:///sdcard" in the URL window and then select your Backup+ or Titanium Backup APK to install it. Be sure you have "Install from unknown sources" turned on. Now you can restore your good File Manager (like FX File Manager mentioned in Post #5) from your Backup and don't need Cyanogen's!

NOTE: If you have trouble with OpenGapps, then you can try my stable mirror or SlimGapps (which is now recommended by jgcaap, but I've not tried it myself yet ... but expect it to be the new recommended after I run it through the paces).

Step 6 - Reboot your Phone

After flashing, the first time your phone comes up, its going to optimize itself and you should expect it to take awhile. Don't panic, and wait a few minutes. I refuse the CyanogenMod account (you already have a Google one, and Cyanogen doesn't offer anything extra and defintely do NOT send bug reports or analytics to Cyanogen!). I also go into Settings, About Phone, tap the Build Number like a mad monkey to turn on Developer options, and from there, I enable the Reboot Menu, Fast Boot, Cut the animations down to below 0.5, and turn on ADB since I'll be installing Backup+ over ADB.

Step 7 - Restore your Backup

Use your file manager (or ADB) to install your backup program and then restore the rest of the apps from your backup. I keep my Wifi off so that Google Play won't freak out and try upgrading stuff while its restoring. Do not use ROM Settings Backups to try to move settings from one ROM to another (thats what Update files are for). You can usually restore your Desktop with Backup+ by restoring the data for Trebuchet if you formerly used another Cyanogen release. The next reboot I go to Play Store and upgrade any apps that need it.

Step 8 - Final Config / Updates

I haven't found a perfect way to back up Trebuchet and my desktop ... but Backup+'s system backup tool (paid feature) can be used to restore the Trebuchet data, which gets everything but the widgets. If you use OmniSwitcher, just turn it on. If you use Xposed, it should already be working and active. If you don't use Xposed, jgcaap's version won't slow down your phone or cause glitches. However, if you really don't want it on your phone, you can flash this to deinstall it and can reinstall it without flashing the whole ROM by flashing this file.

MaxxAudio is gone ... use Viper. Set it to Super Audio Quality and reboot when it says to (Aardvark only, no reboot required for Badger and above). More about Viper here. I strongly recommend reading as there are a lot of optional add-ons (convolvers and such for emulating other tones and systems) but many of these will use significant battery power. I don't even use it for the built-in speaker. You can control it per output device, and have different profiles, such as if you have multiple pairs of headphones or different USB Audio devices.

Please Donate to the developers when you use an app. It is only through your support that you get to use high quality apps. This ROM has ads blocked, so developers of free apps will go poor and hungry since they won't be getting any revenue from your ad clicks!

Flashing Instructions - Updates

An update is a slimmed down version without any apps (unless they've been updated), no firmware, no media files, etc. And it avoids flashing over files you may have changed or deinstalled, like the hosts file or various bundled apps. It doesn't touch your settings, you don't need to wipe anything, and it just upgrades in-place. All you need to do is Steps 2 and 4 and 6!! Updates are clearly labelled. Never wipe your phone when installing an update! No OTA yet.