Week Ending: November 9, 2013
“This Week in CyanogenMod” is an ongoing feature that aims to serve as a one-stop shop for weekly updates. Topics discussed are culled from our social media accounts, gerrit, status updates and general thoughts.
Just a bit of CM 10.2 news, and then we’ll jump right into CM 11 discussions.
CM 10.2 M1 Released
In the midst of all the KitKat news, we released the first ‘M’ build for CM 10.2. This means that our JIRA Bug tracker is now open to take reports against 10.2 code. If you flashed the M1 release and experienced some issues, please do let us know (and provide a log). Our plan is to incorporate the fixes for and bugs you bring to our attention via JIRA and add in the backlog of outstanding patches that were not ready for the M1 release – including the new AppOps ‘always ask’ functionality. From there, we will play it by ear, but likely do a RC1 and then roll right into 10.2.0 stable. This will give us a satisfactory conclusion to the 4.3.1 code before we focus solely on KitKat and CM11.
Speaking of CM11…
The source code for Android 4.4 began its release on October 31st (yay Halloween!). From there, it took us roughly 4 days to get the code whipped up into shape and pushed up to our Github repository, with a manifest to match. So what does this mean for you actually running KitKat on your device? By merging in the core projects and overall Android 4.4 code, our talented team of contributors have begun the process of integrating (or reworking) all the CM features that you have come to love. This milestone also kicked off the bulk of the device bring-up efforts, and we are already seeing good results. Just to showcase a few: Xperia T, HTC One, S4 Mini, Galaxy Tab, Nexus 10, Skyrocket and many more (yes, including the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 (12/13) and Nexus 5).
To the larger question of device support, we have two general comments. First, and we’ve said this previously, just because KitKat is touted as being better for lower RAM devices doesn’t mean we will be bringing back support for devices that we’ve dropped in the past. We were already operating under a 512MB RAM minimum, so that point is moot. The thing Google was trying to say with the lower requirements was directed to OEMs, not end users. There were still OEMs out there shipping new Gingerbread (2.3) devices because they believed that ICS and higher were too memory hungry. The new minimum requirement is to tell these OEMs to stop Gingerbread devices and instead focus on KitKat for new low end devices moving forward. This in no way means the Moto Droid or Nexus One will suddenly see the necessary OEM cooporation to jump to KitKat. Sorry to burst that bubble, but perpetuating that misconception would just drive further confusion.
Second, there is no list of devices that will get CM11 – statuses change daily and we wouldn’t be able to provide one at this stage anyways. Our goal is everything that got 10.2 will at the least be attempted to be brought up to 11 – but this is not a promise and goals can be missed. Notably, OMAP support is lacking, so those Moto devices that rely on that SoC may not make the jump. I’m not saying one way or another at this moment (again, its too soon to tell), but do be prepared for some future post outlining what devices, and more importantly why some devices, will not be making the jump to 11.
Nightlies?
Inevitably some of you skipped the above and jumped directly here :p. The goal is to have things moving in full force for CM 11 nightlies by the end of this month. In the meantime, individual maintainers have started the ‘unofficial alpha’ process to reach a larger test audience and to satisfy those that need to flash asap. Don’t know your maintainer? You should get to know them. By no means am I saying nag them for a build, but many run their own threads to discuss their own status updates – worth following for those interested in that day to day information.
Want to learn?
I suppose to most people the process of moving a device from 10.2 to 11 is a black-box, something that someone extra talented just ‘does’. Well, we’re all about education and the learning process here at CM, so on that note, fattire has taken the extra step of documenting out the process to updating the Nexus 7 (grouper). He has two threads, the first a ‘why should I learn’ and general info and the second is specific to the the CM11 code. Worth a read even if you aren’t going to go through with the process.
We’re also working on a document geared towards common issues our devs have run into with tips/tricks to help resolve them. We’ll share that next week 
Got a suggestion for a topic you’d like to see in the next round-up? Let us know in the comments below. All device/port requests will be ignored.