Phones can be life savers. Don’t rely on this ROM as your sole communication means.
This is mostly for users that want to play with their phones 
and want to have a bit more control over their devices. Let’s update this together (code, spelling, …).
ROOTING: If you’re just here for rooting the phone, please take a look at the section called “Ways for adding setuid/setgid’ed su/adbd and other binaries to the image (Rooting)” below first. Maybe you don’t need to build from source to do that, the information on this subject is changing quickly!
Compile your own FP2 ROM
-
Have a SSD (not needed, but faster …) with lots of space ready. The checkout and full build as described here needs around 46G (around 67GB for others). A docker image needs around 52G(?). The full build and all repositories checked out as described in the official guide takes around 75G.
-
Use gcc-4.8 (or 4.6). Newer gcc’s will give you trouble with webkit and gcc is not loved anymore by the Android-SoC people anyway. I think there will be/is a switch to LLVM underway. Read about it. It comes with interesting implications licenses-wise. If you have issues on a Debian based system, try using
update-alternativesto change the gcc-version. (Add more info on how to do this later)
Prepare your system (check the official build instructions and install all the software needed that is described there)
##software install on different OSs/distributions
Still in drafting. Follow the official guide first!. Most people install on already “used” machines so packages and experience vary. The Dockerfile can be a good start for peeking as well.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Installation of zlib1g-dev:i386 will result in issues if repo has not been installed before. Install repo (inluded in phablet-tools) first:
$ sudo apt-get install phablet-tools
Follow up with the suggested build environment:
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk bison g++-multilib \
gcc-multilib git gperf libxml2-utils make \
python-networkx zlib1g-dev:i386 zip
Ubuntu 15.10
(add more info here if it is not working …gcc version must be changed as well, I assume.)
$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk bison g++-multilib git gperf \
libxml2-utils make unzip python-networkx zlib1g-dev:i386 zip
Gentoo
OpenJDK can be installed with package dev-java/icedtea or dev-java/icedtea-bin (binary).
Use
eselect java-vm set user icedtea-bin-7
to select the right version at least for the user you’re compiling with…
Python must be switched to version 2.7:
eselect python set python2.7
It may be required to call “make update-api” before “make -j8”.
A build error will state this. Compilation should work afterwards.
(add other systems here)
Using Docker (Windows, other Unix-systems or OS X)
Docker is different. You can get a pre-built image with all software installed so you don’t have to worry about software dependencies. Such a docker image runs in a virtual machine (OS X/Windows) or in a separate container (Linux). You can try the docker image, provided by @jftr.
Keep in mind that installing generated images on your phone will include more steps than currently listed here. The docker image already includes most of the steps that are described below, so you don’t have to worry too much about software dependencies. In the end you will get the *.img files, so make sure you have a working setup for your OS that will allow you to transfer them to your phone (adb/fastboot).
Pulling the Source (Updated for FP2-open-16.05.0)
Clean up ~70 GB of space first!
Go where you have lots of free space, make a directory there and use repo to checkout the code base (the “small” checkout, thanks to @jftr! - only checking out the latest version instead of cloning all repositories entirely)
$ mkdir fairphone_os && cd fairphone_os
$ repo init --depth=1 \
-u http://code.fairphone.com/gerrit/fp2-dev/manifest \
-b fp2-sibon
$ repo sync -c
#####Timeconst
diff --git a/kernel/timeconst.pl b/kernel/timeconst.pl
index eb51d76..063fcc0 100644
--- a/kernel/timeconst.pl
+++ b/kernel/timeconst.pl
@@ -370,7 +370,7 @@ if ($hz eq '--can') {
}
@val = @{$canned_values{$hz}};
- if (!defined(@val)) {
+ if (!(@val)) {
@val = compute_values($hz);
}
output($hz, @val);
Download the bin blobs and run the ‘unpacking’ script on your computer in the same directory. I think a plain tar ball would be much better. Are we still in the age of shrink-wrap licenses?
$ wget http://code.fairphone.com/downloads/FP2/blobs/fp2-sibon-16.06.0-blobs.tgz
$ tar zxvf fp2-sibon-16.06.0-blobs.tgz
$ sh fp2-sibon-16.06.0-blobs.tgz
Load the helper functions:
$ . build/envsetup.sh
If your build works later, you can add more patches/code steps here (like the ones for Unified NLP, see below). But first ensure that your first build works before adding patches to the existing default code.
Building
Start the default build
$ choosecombo 1 FP2 2
$ make -j8
If all works well, you should finally see something like this after an hour or more depending on your system:
(...)
#### make completed successfully (09:24 (mm:ss)) ####
The images will be found here: out/target/product/FP2/*.img
Flashing the images
The phone has to be in bootloader mode, either switching it on with keeping volume down button pressed or booting it into bootloader mode with adb reboot bootloader. The phone is in fastboot mode then, and can only be controlled by fastboot on the PC (or switched off by long pressing the power button >10s). It will only show the Fairphone logo in this state. Of course, you have to connect your phone to the PC via USB.
You can flash all at once with fastboot flashall, which flashes boot.img, recovery.img and system.img and automatically reboots the phone (this only works, if you are stil in the same terminal session, see below). Or you flash the respective image and reboot with
$ fastboot flash recovery recovery.img$ fastboot flash system system.img(in case of problems use-w[= wipe])$ fastboot reboot
If you’ve opened a new terminal session (e.g. you’ve rebooted your computer in the meantime), the fastboot flashall command will fail. To be able to use this command, you have to set up the build environment again before flashing:
$ . build/envsetup.sh
$ choosecombo 1 FP2 2
$ fastboot flashall
Encrypting the phone (working around a bug)
Due to some weird wiping bug, the built-in disk encryption of the userdata partition (accessible via Settings --> Security --> Encrypt phone) doesn’t work on a self compiled FPOSOS. The workaround is to overwrite the userdata partition by one of the following (very similar) methods. But (for the last two methods) remember to carefully backup your apps and data before and to make a plan for restoring it!
- If you’re flashing the images one by one, you can insert
fastboot flash userdata userdata.img
in between flashing the system image and rebooting. - If you’ve used the
flashallcommand or already flashed a while ago, you can
- do a factory reset via
Settings --> Backup & reset --> Factory data reset - or switch to fastboot mode and solely flash the userdata image:
fastboot flash userdata userdata.img fastboot reboot
Afterwards, the encryption in the Settings should work.
If you want to set different passwords for encryption and the lock screen, have a look at this topic.
###Ways for adding setuid/setgid’ed su/adbd and other binaries to the image (Rooting)
-
The newest approach is described by @Max_S in his howto. It looks like like a fully scripted way for changing the boot.img of an exiting OTA image. It will save users that just want root from downloading a lot of code! If you want root fast, have a look there.
Read Max_S’s post (see link above) and check the script in
scripts/su/changes.shafter the checkout for better understanding. The shell scripting is a bit odd, but it seems to work. And yes, you will still need unix/a virtual machine to do this. The very short version:git clone https://github.com/mstaz/super-bootimg.git1 cd super-bootimg bash download.sh known-imgs/fairphone/fp2 bash build.sh fairphone/fp2 -
Modifying the official image by installing a modified recovery and side-loading the packages you want (Thanks, @lklaus/@vivia!)
-
Follow the instructions on the top of this thread, but stop right before the
make -j8command. -
Download Busybox from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-9cNi0ys0CMeGdhTXFlMW9qaUk/view?usp=docslist_api (One-shot compilation by @lklaus )
-
Put rcbins.tar inside your fairphone_os directory and extract it.
-
Download SuperSU from here: SuperSU Download (Do we know how safe this source is?)
-
Put SuperSU inside your fairphone_os directory, but don’t extract it.
-
Apply this patch: FP2-preroot.patch · GitHub
You can either open it and apply it manually (just a few lines to be added) or look at this: Redirecting to Google Groups -
Now start compiling
$ make -j8 -
If the compilation is successful:
-
Reboot into the phone’s bootloader
$ adb reboot bootloader(or press down arrow + power) -
Connect your phone to the computer if you haven’t done so
-
Wait for the device to appear
$ fastboot devices -
Flash the recovery image
$ fastboot flash recovery out/target/product/FP2/recovery.img
If this is successful: -
Reboot into recovery mode again (up arrow + power)
-
From the menu on the phone, select “Apply update from ADB”
$ adb sideload UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip -
Reboot and you’re ready!
-
Compiling your own image and adding the packages you need (will even be signed?) (Add more info here, all this is untested on a real device – @fp1_wo_sw_update)
###Issues
If you have problems compiling, check your gcc version, try make clean, remove the out dir and start over again. Don’t forget to run . build/envsetup.sh and to unpack the bin blobs. Try to post a meaningful part of the error message you get! Often, you have to scroll up a bit to find useful information.
For a full report use something like make -j1 2>&1 | tee build.log and post the more meaningful parts just before the end here.
###GAPPS
If you want to run GAPPS on your phone make sure you read about the apk signing issue here.
###Notes
For comparison and analysis (see @jochensp 's post) have a look at the official image. To find it, just have a look inside the updater.xml file from here. Current is: FP2-gms36-1.1.7-ota.zip. You can also sideload this file to your phone from the recovery.
###Helper scripts
Useful for applying repo diffs, that function is not there right now (by Kapil?). Ugly rm in there, could need a fix with mktemp, anyone?
#!/bin/bash
## Script to patch up diff created by `repo diff`
if [ -z "$1" ] || [ ! -e "$1" ]; then
echo "Usages: $0 <repo_diff_file>";
exit 0;
fi
rm -fri _tmp_splits*
cat $1 | csplit -qf '' -b "_tmp_splits.%d.diff" - '/^project.*\/$/' '{*}'
working_dir=`pwd`
for proj_diff in `ls _tmp_splits.*.diff`
do
chg_dir=`cat $proj_diff | grep '^project.*\/$' | cut -d " " -f 2`
echo "FILE: $proj_diff $chg_dir"
if [ -e $chg_dir ]; then
( cd $chg_dir; \
cat $working_dir/$proj_diff | grep -v '^project.*\/$' | patch -Np1;);
else
echo "$0: Project directory $chg_dir don't exists.";
fi
done
Your question sent me to a google search, and it looks I have to provide a kernel also… Will see…
Maybe I did something wrong…?
Did anybody of you succeed in building? Has anybody an idea what I did wrong?