Known Issues

Even with our best care, small problems sometimes slip in. This page keeps track of the known issues around using the Android source code.

Missing CTS Native XML Generator

Symptom: On some builds of IceCreamSandwich and later, the following warning is printed early during the build: /bin/bash: line 0: cd: cts/tools/cts-native-xml-generator/src/res: No such file or directory

Cause: Some makefile references that path, which doesn't exist.

Fix: None. This is a harmless warning.

Black Gingerbread Emulator

Symptom: The emulator built directly from the gingerbread branch doesn't start and stays stuck on a black screen.

Cause: The gingerbread branch uses version R7 of the emulator, which doesn't have all the features necessary to run recent versions of gingerbread.

Fix: Use version R12 of the emulator, and a newer kernel that matches those tools. No need to do a clean build.

$ repo forall platform/external/qemu -c git checkout aosp/tools_r12
$ make
$ emulator -kernel prebuilt/android-arm/kernel/kernel-qemu-armv7

Emulator built on MacOS 10.7 Lion doesn't work.

Symptom: The emulator (any version) built on MacOS 10.7 Lion and/or on XCode 4.x doesn't start.

Cause: Some change in the development environment causes the emulator to be compiled in a way that prevents it from working.

Fix: Use an emulator binary from the SDK, which is built on MacOS 10.6 with XCode 3 and works on MacOS 10.7.

Difficulties syncing the source code (proxy issues).

Symptom: repo init or repo sync fail with http errors, typically 403 or 500.

Cause: There are quite a few possible causes, most often related to http proxies, which have difficulties handling the large amounts of data getting transfered.

Fix: While there's no general solution, using python 2.7 and explicitly using repo sync -j1 have been reported to improve the situation for some users.

`make snod` and emulator builds.

Symptom: When using make snod (make system no dependencies) on emulator builds, the resulting build doesn't work.

Cause: All emulator builds now run Dex optimization at build time by default, which requires to follow all dependencies to re-optimize the applications each time the framework changes.