Android Mainlining Project

This page is for organizing the Android Mainlining Project. It has information and resources associated with this project.

Goal
The goal of this project is to ultimately mainline all patches required to run the current released version of Android. The purpose of mainlining these patches it 3-fold:
 * 1) to allow a developer to use the latest released version of the Linux kernel to run an Android system, without requiring patches to their kernel
 * 2) to make it possible to develop drivers and board support features against either an Android kernel release or a kernel.org kernel release, with little or no modifications or conditional code
 * 3) to reduce or eliminate the burden of maintaining independent patches from release to release for Android kernel developers

To "mainline" a patch means to have it included in Linus Torvalds kernel.org kernel, in a released (non-rc) version.

Process
[This is a draft section, up for discussion]

Overall:
 * identify all patches/features, and categorize into core or non/core
 * core = feature is required or strongly desired for Android operation on a platform
 * non-core = Most of the Android system can run without the feature

Per feature or patch:
 * research any previous submission feedback
 * incorporate feedback, as appropriate
 * negotiate any interface changes with Google Android team
 * submit updated patches to mainline
 * repeat until accepted

Resources

 * mailing list??
 * Linaro blueprint for project: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linux-linaro/+spec/linaro-kernel-android-upstreaming

People
People who have expressed interest in this:


 * Tim Bird
 * John Stultz
 * Paul McKenney
 * Deepak Saxena
 * Arnd Bergmann
 * Thomas Gleixner
 * Arjan Van de Ven
 * Brian Swetland
 * Tetsuyuki Kobayashi
 * Andy Green


 * Victor M. Jaquez

Progress Chart
This section is intended to show our progress, by showing the patch set size over time. With any luck, as we get features into mainline, the difference between the Android kernel and the legacy Linux kernel will shrink.