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Getting Started with AOSP - Part 1

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By Saalim Quadri
2 min read
Getting Started with AOSP - Part 1

Today marks six years since I compiled my very first Android source build — it was Android 7.0 Nougat. Ever since then, I’ve been deeply involved in Android platform development, and there’s one question that keeps coming back to me, asked by thousands of people:

“What does it actually take to get started with AOSP?”

If you’re new to the Android Open Source Project, the sheer scale of it can feel overwhelming. I still get the occasional nightmare navigating through frameworks/base, HAL layers, and random blueprint files scattered across the tree.

But here’s the thing: it is not scary.

What Does It Really Take?

This might be a biased take, but in my experience, the first step isn’t to understand the entire system, it’s just to get used to the build system and boot it somehow. Whether it be a custom smartphone, emulator, or any other embedded hardware.

Start by learning how to:

  • Download the source
  • Build an image
  • Flash it to a real device or emulator

Once you’ve successfully compiled and flashed your first build, the next steps, tweaking features, debugging logs, upstreaming changes, or even building your own product will come in eventually.

AOSP Can Be Anything

Before I go deeper, I’ve decided not to throw everything into a single blog post. Instead, I’ll break this into a short series where I’ll cover:

  • What you can do with AOSP (trust me, it’s a lot more than you can imagine)
  • How to get started (step-by-step)
  • Prerequisites (tools, machines, repositories)
  • What is AOSP exactly?
  • How long it takes to build, boot, and development

Whether you’re an applications developer, a systems engineer, or just curious about the OS behind billions of devices, AOSP has something for you.

For Today

If you’re new and wondering where to begin, here’s my advice:

  • Don’t aim to understand everything at once.
  • Just try to build and boot a device first.
  • Everything else — debugging, customization, mainlining, and contributing — will follow.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll start with “What is AOSP, really?” and why it’s more than just a pile of code.

I am also planning to start with a Youtube channel:

Have questions or want to collaborate? Reach out to me on my email

AOSP Tutorials
AOSP Android OS
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.