Android kernel (v4.4.243) for the Volla Phone

Features

1. Upstreamed to latest 4.4.y subversion release available on kernel.org
2. Added LOTS of build time fixes and improvements:
   • Fixed some actual issues in code thanks to -Werror under newer GCC
   • Any GCC version up to 10.2 with relevant binutils have been tested as working
   • In-tree compilation has been fixed (no need to use make O=out anymore)
   • Migrated MediaTek's DCT tool from Python 2 to Python 3
   • Silenced a bunch of build-time message spam from MediaTek Makefiles and such
   • Builds with CC=clang (only on wip-llvm-clang-support branch, crashes when entering suspend)
3. Silenced LOTS of message spam in dmesg on device runtime
4. Disabled even more debugging features in defconfig

Branches

• android-9.0 — Android 9 kernel source with many build fixes and some cleanup
• halium-9.0 — Same as android-9.0, but with Halium 9 patches for e.g. Ubuntu Touch

Building

Environment

The currently used & tested working build env consists of (others should work fine as well):

• An x86-64 Ubuntu 20.10 (-based) distro
• binutils 2.35
• GCC 10.2

Dependencies

Ubuntu / Debian (-based)

# apt install -y build-essential gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu libssl-dev python3 bc curl mkbootimg kmod

Arch Linux (-based)

# pacman -S --needed --noconfirm base-devel aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc python3 bc android-tools kmod

Kernel build

The process should be straight forward following the prompts from the build.sh script:

./build.sh

Deployment to a device

The deploy.sh script will detect and attempt to deploy a boot.img & kernel-modules.tar.gz in the current directory to a connected device in recovery mode.

Ubuntu Touch

./deploy.sh

NOTE: The device needs to be booted to UBports recovery for this to work AND these changes will get overwritten by the default kernel on OS updates!

Links

• Default README
• HelloVolla's kernel tree
• Google's common 4.4 Android Pie kernel
• Upstream linux-stable 4.4.y tree
• Ubuntu 20.10 Minimal Cloud Image