This section describes how to set up your local work environment to build the Android source files. You will need to use Linux or Mac OS. Building under Windows is not currently supported.

For an overview of the entire code-review and code-update process, see Life of a Patch.

Choosing a Branch

Some of the requirements for your build environment are determined by which version of the source code you plan to compile. See 

Build Numbers for a full listing of branches you may choose from. You may also choose to download and build the latest source code (called master), in which case you will simply omit the branch specification when you initialize the repository.

Once you have selected a branch, follow the appropriate instructions below to set up your build environment.

Setting up a Linux build environment

These instructions apply to all branches, including master.

The Android build is routinely tested in house on recent versions of Ubuntu LTS (14.04), but most distributions should have the required build tools available. Reports of successes or failures on other distributions are welcome.

For Gingerbread (2.3.x) and newer versions, including the master branch, a 64-bit environment is required. Older versions can be compiled on 32-bit systems.

Note: See the Requirements for the complete list of hardware and software requirements. Then follow the detailed instructions for Ubuntu and Mac OS below.

Installing the JDK

The master branch of Android in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) requires Java 8. On Ubuntu, use OpenJDK.

For Ubuntu >= 15.04

Run the following:

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

For Ubuntu LTS 14.04

There are no available supported OpenJDK 8 packages for Ubuntu 14.04. The Ubuntu 15.04 OpenJDK 8 packages have been used successfully with Ubuntu 14.04. Newer package versions (e.g. those for 15.10, 16.04) were found not to work on 14.04 using the instructions below.

1. Download the .deb packages for 64-bit architecture from archive.ubuntu.com:

   • openjdk-8-jre-headless_8u45-b14-1_amd64.deb with SHA2560f5aba8db39088283b51e00054813063173a4d8809f70033976f83e214ab56c0
   • openjdk-8-jre_8u45-b14-1_amd64.deb with SHA2569ef76c4562d39432b69baf6c18f199707c5c56a5b4566847df908b7d74e15849
   • openjdk-8-jdk_8u45-b14-1_amd64.deb with SHA2566e47215cf6205aa829e6a0a64985075bd29d1f428a4006a80c9db371c2fc3c4c

2. Optionally, confirm the checksums of the downloaded files against the SHA256 string listed with each package above.

   For example, with the sha256sum tool:

   $ sha256sum {downloaded.deb file}

3. Install the packages:

   $ sudo apt-get update

   Run dpkg for each of the .deb files you downloaded. It may produce errors due to missing dependencies:

   $ sudo dpkg -i {downloaded.deb file}

   To fix missing dependencies:

   $ sudo apt-get -f install

Update the default Java version - optional

Optionally, for the Ubuntu versions above update the default Java version by running:

$ sudo update-alternatives --config java $ sudo update-alternatives --config javac

If, during a build, you encounter version errors for Java, set its path as described in the Wrong Java Version section.

Installing required packages (Ubuntu 14.04)

You will need a 64-bit version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 14.04 is recommended.

$ sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \ zip curl zlib1g-dev gcc-multilib g++-multilib libc6-dev-i386 \ lib32ncurses5-dev x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev lib32z-dev ccache \ libgl1-mesa-dev libxml2-utils xsltproc unzip

Note: To use SELinux tools for policy analysis, also install the python-networkx package.

Note: If you are using LDAP and want to run ART host tests, also install the libnss-sss:i386package.

Installing required packages (Ubuntu 12.04)

You may use Ubuntu 12.04 to build older versions of Android. Version 12.04 is not supported on master or recent releases.

$ sudo apt-get install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \ zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \ libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \ libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos \ python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 $ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so

Installing required packages (Ubuntu 10.04 -- 11.10)

Building on Ubuntu 10.04-11.10 is no longer supported, but may be useful for building older releases of AOSP.

$ sudo apt-get install git gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \ zip curl zlib1g-dev libc6-dev lib32ncurses5-dev ia32-libs \ x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev lib32readline5-dev lib32z-dev \ libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos python-markdown \ libxml2-utils xsltproc

On Ubuntu 10.10:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib32/mesa/libGL.so

On Ubuntu 11.10:

$ sudo apt-get install libx11-dev:i386