[G2 and Desire Z Android Development] enomther:
Yea about this ...

There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye per se ...

1st) This "ROM" -(end-quote) is essentially the shipping software that came with your G2, deodexed (and themed if chosen).

2nd) When providing a custom build (aka "ROM"), there's several essential things we need to make it effective

--- a safe/effective bootloader for getting out of major jams

--- a recovery image that allows us to safely backup/restore our configurations

--- custom kernels (b/c the shipping kernel, while "ok" ... and able to be plugged with hacked kernel modules ... do not afford an effective level on control of the device's behaviour ... start-2-finsih)

--- ability to control the init process (init scripts etc) ... this is extremely crucial.

3rd) The shear fact that I must use the sdcard for the entire phone's operation and not be able to leverage the onboard NAND at all while juicing space I could easily leverage for FAT32 (IE: music or photo/videos from that nice 720p cam etc) ... is simply depressing and causes me to loose interest.

As a result of the above ... really running anything other than a modded completely stock-ROM is near impossible. B/c this "ROM" is essentially stock from TMO it enables me to "boot" (poor choice of a word) it in a cheated manner without sacrificing quite a few things and is enabled to work for the *most part* properly. What this means is, if one were to run a more customized "ROM" like say CyanogenMOD or a ported version of my Nexus1 build there are many limitations and such ports would have a few issues. The main "pain" here centers around not being able to control the kernel/init-process. While this is likely possible with much work, there is much to consider. At this point in time I've invested say 30 hours or so on this device and have reached a point where I can control the full init process, but have hit a stumbling block in terms of being able to regain "Data" connectivity through the radio after said process. Otherwise I have full control at this point -minus the kernel, which is likely only another step away. This is aggrevating though ... and it appears there may be some custom stuff going on with the APN/Radio operation here.

Bottomline, to get more custom ROM's, like CMMod, mine or say a DesireZ port ... these challenges will have to be faced. I've personally made good progress, but sometimes you just have to take a break and reflect b/c monotony gets boring. :/

Last week I was about 90% on porting my full "ROM"/build to this phone -minus said above radio issues and some other related/unrelated details ... after 2 days on the same issue ... I just polished the physical phone (original stickers/packaging and all) ... and boxed it up ... sometimes you just got to walk away for a little bit. :)

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(Sorry for the long-windedness ... I just do not plan to respond regarding again is all ... wanted to say it all first time :)

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The reason I say all these things is because in light of the above, there's just not a whole lot to write a tutorial about here. It's really either this ... or first address the above challenges.

I'm holding out some hope for the G2 ... the company I work for (of which I'm not at liberty to "reveal") chose TMobile first for the G1/crackberry combination and further chose later for the NexusOne capabilities that I and my crew were able to accomplish with them (complete internal debian based side-projet, while still allowing the crackberry corp users to have their BES) ... albiet this entire custom rooted build/application is entirely centered around the ability to effectively leverage ROOT and using TMobile (for crackberries). So now they've acquired (1) G2 ... for my testing ... and all are holding their breath to see if the G2 can do what the G1 has done for us (many phone/plan purchases/upgrades held up on this now)

So I really hope that someone is successful in cracking the G2 soon. :) (I fear that when it is ... it will be even more dangerous of an operation than it was in the G1/DeathSPL days). My company has already begun to consider other Android alternatives ... namely it appears Verizon/Droid :/ ... yet others push for iFail phones ... which I'm fighting both tooth n' nail b/c I love Tmobile, AOSP-Android and HTC and continue to fight for their holdout while the "uppers" debate whether to hawk my mint condition G2 test device. :/

So I do plan to revisit this style build in about a week from now, but for now remain discouraged :( ... the reality is ... that even if I can come up with a next best-effort style sdcard "ROM" ... I'll likely not be "allowed" to support it in the future ... as my "uppers" won't tolerate this hoaky temproot/boot-twice stuff ... and this is were I'm personally at ...

(rock [me] hard-place).

~enom~