Add prebuilt APKs to Android AOSP system.img

Question

I'm building AOSP from source. What I would like to do is to include a few prebuilt files in the generated system.img as part of the make process. I'm trying to find the actual file that creates the system.img and add a few lines there. Any idea?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

A good way of adding custom files to the system.img is to add them under vendor/your_name/product_you_want_to_add_them/proprietary/your_files_go_here and add a custom make file called device-product_name.mk.

After that's done, just define which files are to be copied from the proprietary folder and inside (e.g. vendor/samsung/crespo/device-vendor.mk add to call your device make file).

Answer 2

Just put your source code to the Packages/apps directory,then make sure your project has a correct make file like other project in the apps directory.You will make the package prebuilt after finish the android build.

Answer 3

To add a prebuilt file to a build, find a .mk file which makes sense for your project and add the file under PRODUCT_COPY_FILE. It looks like this

 PRODUCT_COPY_FILE += your/build/tree/$FILE:path/to/location/on/device/$FILE

Using a separate vendor tree is following good domain-driven principles...but is perhaps overkill for a single binary. Examine the makefiles you already use, there is often prebuilt apks already being added that you can piggyback on. device and existing vendor trees are good places to start looking. Maintaining an entirely new project is not something to be taken lightly, in my opinion.