As of Now : Release is :

A quick lunch guide

In this guide, we’ll see how to use lunch, how it works and how to setup it properly. We’ll see how to setup a device for building too.

1: Unofficial build

When you make an unofficial build (community), you will have to find the sources by yourself, and add it in a .xml file. This file well need to be named following your device’s codename. During this guide, when I’ll talk about device.xml, replace device with your device’s codename, of course… In this file, we’ll add all the trees we need. It usually depends on the device and the OEM, but you’ll generally need :

• The device tree(s)
• The vendor tree(s)
• Kernel sources
• Sometimes, extra dependencies (such as hardware dependencies)

I say tree(s) because sometimes, a device shares commons trees with other devices using the same CPU, for example.

Once you found your trees, let’s build our xml. Here is the classic structure of a .xml (in this case, like I said, for Polaris.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest>
    <!--Remotes-->
    <remote name="los"            fetch="https://github.com/LineageOS"           revision="lineage-21" />
    <remote name="muppets"        fetch="https://github.com/TheMuppets"          revision="lineage-21" />
 
    <!--Devices Trees-->
    <project name="android_device_xiaomi_polaris"           path="device/xiaomi/polaris"       remote="los" />
    <project name="android_device_xiaomi_sdm845-common"     path="device/xiaomi/sdm845-common" remote="los" />
 
    <!--Vendors Tree-->
    <project name="proprietary_vendor_xiaomi_polaris"       path="vendor/xiaomi/polaris"       remote="muppets" />
    <project name="proprietary_vendor_xiaomi_sdm845-common" path="vendor/xiaomi/sdm845-common" remote="muppets" />
 
    <!--Kernel Tree-->
    <project name="android_kernel_xiaomi_sdm845"            path="kernel/xiaomi/sdm845"        remote="los" />
 
    <!--Hardware dependencies-->
    <project name="android_hardware_xiaomi"                 path="hardware/xiaomi"             remote="los" />
</manifest>

Let’s explain what is in here:

<manifest>
    <!--Remotes-->
    <remote name="los"            fetch="https://github.com/LineageOS"           revision="lineage-21" />
    <remote name="muppets"        fetch="https://github.com/TheMuppets"          revision="lineage-21" />
    <!-- ... -->
</manifest>

These lines tells the repo sync command where to look for when syncing dependencies. The remotes are the roots of where repo sync will have to look for.

If we look closer at this line for example:

<project
  name="android_device_xiaomi_polaris"
  path="device/xiaomi/polaris"
  remote="los"
/>

We tell the repo sync command to clone https://github.com/lineageos/android_device_xiaomi_polaris  into the device/xiaomi/polaris folder.

When your device.xml is written, and in the right directory, simply sync the sources:

repo sync -c -j$(nproc --all) --force-sync --no-clone-bundle --no-tags

And everything will be retrieved. Then you only need to:

lunch lineage_$device-$release-$build_type

Where $device is your device’s codename and $build_type is the build type. There is a paragraph about it at the end of this guide, we’ll come back to it later.

But for Polaris, it would look like

lunch lineage_polaris-$release-userdebug

2: Official Build

Congrats! you are an official maintainer. Now that you have been granted access to your device’s trees, you can setup the automatic lunch.

EvolutionX uses the same system as LineageOS for syncing dependencies automatically without having to rewrite the device.xml every time.

When you become a maintainer, remove the lineage.dependencies file and replace it with an evolution.dependencies instead in your tree.

Here is the evolution.dependencies for Polaris:

[
  {
    "repository": "device_xiaomi_sdm845-common",
    "target_path": "device/xiaomi/sdm845-common"
  },
  {
    "repository": "vendor_xiaomi_polaris",
    "target_path": "vendor/xiaomi/polaris"
  }
]

As you can see, we find only 2 trees instead of 6 in the polaris.xml But as you can see too, there is a device_xiaomi_sdm845-common repository. Looking at the evolution.dependencies in this repo, we see that it contains all the trees needed for the devices using the same common tree, so no need to set it up again

Of course, it may depend. Always check the lineage.dependencies, it will contains all you need.

You can of course setup external repos. Example with polaris with Xiaomi camera added to it:

[
  {
    "repository": "device_xiaomi_sdm845-common",
    "target_path": "device/xiaomi/sdm845-common"
  },
  {
    "repository": "vendor_xiaomi_polaris",
    "target_path": "vendor/xiaomi/polaris"
  },
  {
    "repository": "ItzDFPlayer/vendor_xiaomi_miuicamera",
    "target_path": "vendor/xiaomi/miuicamera",
    "branch": "leica-5.0",
    "remote": "gitlab"
  }
]

As you can see, we find almost the same thing as polaris.xml: repository, target_path, branch. What will change is the remote. You have to pick a remote already defined by EvolutionX.

When it’s done, simply lunch

lunch lineage_$device-$release-$build_type

This command will clone everything for you directly !

3: A quick memo about the build args

Actually, a few more args are available.

The different commands would be :

lunch lineage_polaris-$release-user

lunch lineage_polaris-$release-userdebug

lunch lineage_polaris-$release-eng

When it’s done:

m evolution

and #KeepEvolving!