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While we're on the topic, I was surprised to find just how poorly maintained TWRP—the standard custom recovery distribution for Android—is. Decryption of encryp

While we're on the topic, I was surprised to find just how poorly maintained TWRP—the standard custom recovery distribution for Android—is. Decryption of encrypted partitions is just broken many devices, for example. Issues pile up across the respective repositories as designated "maintainers" ignore all inquiries. Doing the work to fix something yourself requires piecing together the arcane knowledge of TWRP's build process from multiple tutorial posts on forums in various states of obsolescence. Then you need to understand from where whoever did the original work for your device pulled the library binaries that are inevitably sprinkled across its repository under vague commit messages and no other documentation. It seems no effort was put into securing the project's continuity in the long term.

wyldfire 9y ago
> It seems no effort was put into securing the project's continuity in the long term. But it's no small challenge, right? I'd suppose that regression testing these features against a bunch of devices requires lots of human interaction or complex test scenario descriptions.
- mintplant 9y ago
  I meant more along the lines of documenting your build process or noting where any of the binary blobs were sourced from. Simple things that make coming in as a new contributor viable. As it is now, basic, essential information vanishes along with each maintainer who loses interest in the project.
  - Avamander 9y ago
    > As it is now, basic, essential information vanishes along with each maintainer who loses interest in the project. Binary blobs come from the OEM's system image, I can't recall when that isn't the case.
    - subway 9y ago
      The question of what version of the OEM system image to use isn't always super clear. I've definitely seen situations where rom devs will mix and match whatever it takes to get their desired results.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      In which case the instructions start with, "Go to the following URL, download the file named foo, and use the following command to extract bar and baz." But write those instructions!
subway 9y ago
The entire android rom development ecosystem feels that way to me. Lineage is a bit of an exception with fairly solid and well documented build system, but for by and large, XDA feels a lot like the 90s warez/cracking scene. Lots of really smart people shipping hand crafted blobs on forums.
- Avamander 9y ago
  The documentation or lack of it thereof doesn't help with that. I can't think of a single google query that got an answer when I was building LOS for my own device. Another thing that doesn't help is that it takes enormous amount of times to make a clean build and quite often some final touches to the installation file have to be made to make them compatible with TWRP etc. My point is that no volunteer has time to document stuff and because of that no volunteer has time to document stuff repeat ad infinitum.
  - rrix2 9y ago
    I was in a similar position a few months back. Was trying to simply build Lineage with MicroG and Xposed baked in for personal use and was essentially shouted out of the LineageOS-dev IRC channel and told to write a backup script and to flash the ZIP files instead of compiling it. They seemed outright hostile to fixing this situation, or maybe I was shouted out of the channel by some randos.
    - Avamander 9y ago
      Yeah, LineageOS devs actively disapprove/hate/censor anything MicroG and Xposed related, don't EVER mention those things if you want any "official" help. I find it appalling, but too few care about it to backslash so that it had an effect.
- kitsunesoba 9y ago
  Yes, my admittedly limited exposure to Android has been negatively tinted due to this. Rooting and installing stock Android on a first gen Kindle Fire and later on, a Google Pixel C tablet are both sitting high in my list of most frustrating technical endeavors despite being a software dev and enthusiastically embracing technology for the past two decades of my life. I was shocked to find that the process was only moderately more straightforward on first party android devices. If I ever buy another android device I’m going to treat it like an iOS device and not even bother with the tinkering aspect. It’s too much of a mess to be enjoyable for me.
ViViDboarder 9y ago
I was involved in the original launch of TWRP and maintained a couple devices. Though I haven't been very involved in a few years, so I wouldn't say I speak for the team... but... A big struggle is that things vary so much device to device. General TWRP documentation can be provided by the core maintainers, but each device really needs a maintainer and there's no system of ensuring that each maintainer is documenting with the same rigor. After some time a device will fall off and no longer be considered officially maintained (See TF101: https://twrp.me/asus/asustransformerTF101.html https://twrp.me/asus/asustransformerTF101.html which I used to maintain). There's not much that the project can do about that. If you've got suggestions or would like to help get the documentation into better shape, I'm sure folks in #twrp on freenode would be happy to chat.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  At the very least, bold that "no longer supported" text and move it up the page.
IgorPartola 9y ago
Reminds me of tooling around OpenStreetMaps circa 2012. Not sure if things have gotten better, but back then if you wanted to run something like a tile server, you had to figure out how to build a behemoth C++ project that had no clear build process and absolutely no integration with any OS (as in no init files, etc.). The little documentation that did exist was in German. It was a rough time.
- rmc 9y ago
  There's some better documentation now: https://switch2osm.org/ https://switch2osm.org/

wyldfire 9y ago

> It seems no effort was put into securing the project's continuity in the long term. But it's no small challenge, right? I'd suppose that regression testing these features against a bunch of devices requires lots of human interaction or complex test scenario descriptions.

mintplant 9y ago
I meant more along the lines of documenting your build process or noting where any of the binary blobs were sourced from. Simple things that make coming in as a new contributor viable. As it is now, basic, essential information vanishes along with each maintainer who loses interest in the project.
- Avamander 9y ago
  > As it is now, basic, essential information vanishes along with each maintainer who loses interest in the project. Binary blobs come from the OEM's system image, I can't recall when that isn't the case.
  - subway 9y ago
    The question of what version of the OEM system image to use isn't always super clear. I've definitely seen situations where rom devs will mix and match whatever it takes to get their desired results.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    In which case the instructions start with, "Go to the following URL, download the file named foo, and use the following command to extract bar and baz." But write those instructions!

subway 9y ago

The entire android rom development ecosystem feels that way to me. Lineage is a bit of an exception with fairly solid and well documented build system, but for by and large, XDA feels a lot like the 90s warez/cracking scene. Lots of really smart people shipping hand crafted blobs on forums.

Avamander 9y ago
The documentation or lack of it thereof doesn't help with that. I can't think of a single google query that got an answer when I was building LOS for my own device. Another thing that doesn't help is that it takes enormous amount of times to make a clean build and quite often some final touches to the installation file have to be made to make them compatible with TWRP etc. My point is that no volunteer has time to document stuff and because of that no volunteer has time to document stuff repeat ad infinitum.
- rrix2 9y ago
  I was in a similar position a few months back. Was trying to simply build Lineage with MicroG and Xposed baked in for personal use and was essentially shouted out of the LineageOS-dev IRC channel and told to write a backup script and to flash the ZIP files instead of compiling it. They seemed outright hostile to fixing this situation, or maybe I was shouted out of the channel by some randos.
  - Avamander 9y ago
    Yeah, LineageOS devs actively disapprove/hate/censor anything MicroG and Xposed related, don't EVER mention those things if you want any "official" help. I find it appalling, but too few care about it to backslash so that it had an effect.
kitsunesoba 9y ago
Yes, my admittedly limited exposure to Android has been negatively tinted due to this. Rooting and installing stock Android on a first gen Kindle Fire and later on, a Google Pixel C tablet are both sitting high in my list of most frustrating technical endeavors despite being a software dev and enthusiastically embracing technology for the past two decades of my life. I was shocked to find that the process was only moderately more straightforward on first party android devices. If I ever buy another android device I’m going to treat it like an iOS device and not even bother with the tinkering aspect. It’s too much of a mess to be enjoyable for me.

ViViDboarder 9y ago

I was involved in the original launch of TWRP and maintained a couple devices. Though I haven't been very involved in a few years, so I wouldn't say I speak for the team... but... A big struggle is that things vary so much device to device. General TWRP documentation can be provided by the core maintainers, but each device really needs a maintainer and there's no system of ensuring that each maintainer is documenting with the same rigor. After some time a device will fall off and no longer be considered officially maintained (See TF101: https://twrp.me/asus/asustransformerTF101.html https://twrp.me/asus/asustransformerTF101.html which I used to maintain). There's not much that the project can do about that. If you've got suggestions or would like to help get the documentation into better shape, I'm sure folks in #twrp on freenode would be happy to chat.

voltagex_ 9y ago
At the very least, bold that "no longer supported" text and move it up the page.

IgorPartola 9y ago

Reminds me of tooling around OpenStreetMaps circa 2012. Not sure if things have gotten better, but back then if you wanted to run something like a tile server, you had to figure out how to build a behemoth C++ project that had no clear build process and absolutely no integration with any OS (as in no init files, etc.). The little documentation that did exist was in German. It was a rough time.

rmc 9y ago
There's some better documentation now: https://switch2osm.org/ https://switch2osm.org/