How to build AOSP app without building all of Android?

Question

I've synced the entire Android repo, and set up a build environment per the instructions here: https://source.android.com/source/building

The build instructions seem to be assuming that you want to build the entire Android platform. I'm really interested in building a specific AOSP app, like contacts, SMS, camera, etc. I've seen mirrors of the stock app's code on GitHub, but there doesn't seem to be any build instructions within those, for example:

https://github.com/android/platform_packages_apps_contacts https://github.com/android/platform_packages_apps_calendar

Is there a build guide for doing this? Am I stuck downloading, modifying, building this huge (100+GB) code set?

Answer 1

Just as you have 'mm' to build a certain target, you can also use 'mma' to build that target with its dependencies. For example:

$ mma Settings -j16

This will scan the project for the dependencies of the Settings app, and will afterward build the dependencies first before commencing the build of the Settings app.