Dear diary

So I decided to contribute to some open source project (we'll call it Andr*id to maintain its identity concealed) to kill some time, make my GitHub grow and learn some things.

Big mistake.

So right off the bat, programming knowledge alone is no good. Besides C++ and Java you must also know:
All the while receiving either completely esoteric error messages (e.g.: error 0x000123" An error that could mean literally anything from a bad sector in RAM to a compiler bug) and/or completely obvious messages ("can't open foo: file or directory doesn't exist" gee, thanks. This would be useful if I had to manually create that file. But turns out 99 % of the time some script or makefile was supposed to create that automatically, so better have fun debbuging thousands of text files until you find the fucking function that fails to send the required int.)

The thing is that there's also a bunch of compile warnings and some errors that can be safely ignored because developers decided it was OK to leverage unexpected behaviour or barely working code as long as it works. So now you have to spend six fucking hours reading threads in XDA and the Linux mailing list trying to fix some errors that may actually end up breaking stuff further. And half the shit you read online either don't apply to your specific problem because a. Android and the Android kernel work completely different from regular Linux in some regards (and it's different for each version of the kernel, each OEM, each device and each Android version) and b. The proccess is such a bugfest, that finding someone else with the same error as you is almost impossible.

Then you try to find help. They will tell you to ask in a forum, IRC or mailing list. Again, a mistake. They either won't answer or tell you to RTFM. I ALREADY READ THE FUCKING DOCUMENTATION YOU IMBRED FUCK. JUST TAKE THE GODDAMN DRAGON DILDO OUT OF YOUR ASS FOR 5 MINUTES AND PLEASE HELP ME.

So after a while they decided to help me. Turns out the script was broken if the device's name contains both numbers and uppercase letters at the same time because the dev also uses that function to wipe his ass or something. So now not only must I read the entire device's source code and the Linux source code, I must also read all the tooling's source code and read the developer's mind to know why the script isn't doing what it's supposed to do. Marvelous.

So after a long while I managed to get a flashable image. What an orgasmic feeling. Time to flash the device and...

Bootlop.

There's nothing useful in the logs. There's no dmesg or journalctl (not like that would help because they also suffer from the shitty errors problem.) There is nothing to do besides recompile the kernel with a couple of flags enabled so the boot proccess can be strace'd. At this point I might as well change the terminal's font to Wingdings because it makes as much sense as the gibberish strace prints.

So the problem was apparently the camera's drivers. Proprietary blobs, of course, and they were failing to execute something.

That's it. I'm officially stuck. The documentation's advice to getting un-stuck? Ask in the IRC.

Fuck this shit.

Tools are shit, error messages are useless, documentation is awful, dealing with new problems is hard and the community is not helpful. No wonder developers are all so bitter and mentally ill in their 30s: this is hell.

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warosu.org/g/thread/S69012024#p69014327
source.android.com/
discordapp.com/open-source
chromium.org/chromium-os
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

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see? this is what happens when javalicious pajeets develop an OS and it's forked by more pajeets.

nice blogpost

Half of the problems come from the Linux' source code, Google's patches, Nokia's patches and gcc shenanigans. 90 % of this shit is developed by white (tm) straight (r) males(c).

How did you expect to contribute to a project without knowing fucking anything? You want to work on github without knowing git. You want to work on an open sores project without knowing makefiles. You want to work on an Android project without knowing how it even fucking works.
What the fuck were you expecting?
Go find some 1-maintainer project to help out with, or at least something that you can work with with your below-nigger-tier levels of knowledge.

Wewie laddie.

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Good post. The free software movement is just a harsh environment. The image presented by freetards is fake.

give up, op
Those are things you will need to learn learn no matter what kind of pr*grmming you do. Either suck it up or go back to india

Scat is a horrible fetish, user.
It's not specifically LOS' devs fault. You are trying to hack at: an enormous kernel (Linux), a modified version of this kernel (Android), vendor-specific firmware (closed & proprietary) and device specs that differ wildly from one to another. What did you expect?
Because shit floats downstream. And the starting point for all of this is a team of fucking Pajeets.
Correct and why mobile development is the worst fucking meme of the century and needs to (but won't) die. Just pick a single thing out of the mess OS maintainers juggle and work on that. Want to work with the kernel? Pick a widely supported model and look for small bugs. Want to find out how badly Rajesh fucked up the firmware to your Chinese brick? There are reverse engineering efforts for some models; bring your own rope & soap. As an aside, non-Android OS are also a viable option if you're just looking for something to research - PostmarketOS, for example.
You didn't do all of this on your main device, right, user? Nice 4channel filename btw :^)

haha dumby dumb retard

Just no. I took a quick look over the SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch porting guides a couple years ago and it's literally a compatibility layer running on top of the Android kernel to run the GNU userspace and libraries instead of the Android ones. They also used extensive device-specific hacks just so it kind of runs.
Whatever problem OP has will be multiplied tenfold since now it's not only all the cruft of Linux and Android, but also all of Mer's mediocre hacks.
Postmarket seems to be even worse since they intend to also patch the kernel and the entire project is in alpha.

so what you are basicly saying you need better debug tools
take a look around or make them

assdroid is your typical post-postmodern webscale platform. the last time i devd on that shit you had to use some shitty fork of Eclipse (which was already a terrible piece of shit that crashes all the time and can't even reliably parse/analyze Java code correctly), and the stack of programs running on assdroid was 4KB, and the GUI API would use up the entire stack after you nest 3 or 4 or so elements

I'm confused, the post is phrased like it's about how contributing to FOSS is hard, but it mostly complains about Android. And supposedly it's not even actually about Android. Wut?

Anyways, most of those things hardly apply to the average repo. All you need to know is the language the project is in. Even that is optional if you want to just edit the comments and CoC lel. Git is nice but there's been GUI tools for ages Github even has its own gui tool now. There is also minimal interaction with git because Github lets you do most of it (like PRs) from its web interface.

What do you even expect, that developing an OS is as easy as taking 5 files, clicking compile, and getting Android.exe that you then double click on your phone? Sounds like Android is predictably worse than usual, but OS dev is always complicated. Although if you want an open OS it's probably best to compartmentalize everything so that individual pieces can be run on their own without requiring you to compile the whole thing, and integration tests are done on an automated server. I thought this is how G*ogle did their developement anyway, guess Github contributors are just second class citizens to them because they only care about paying lip service to FOSS.

i thought Zig Forums was smarter than to fall for this obvious bait

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THE ABSOLUTE STATE OF Zig Forums

Welcome to the club

imagine my shock!

I mean.. this is why freetards are called freetards. When you start placing politics over practicality, you've officially gone off the deep end.

Sounds neat but you're wrong. Choosing your software partly because of moral consideration is redpilled.

People don't trust big tech any more. More and more are switching to Free software and there's nothing you can do but shit out the same canned you shills have been shitting out for decades.

Halloween Memo was 21 years ago and MS is now switching to Linux even internally. Windows is probably destined to become a compatibility layer.

UNIX in a nutshell. Many of these problems were solved before UNIX was ever cobbled together. They were called LISP machines.
The UNIX toolchain was and will forever be a shitshow.

...

Free software is more practical than non-free software in the long run. Non-free software is convenient at the present moment doing the functions of whatever you like. What happens when your requirements change and you need something different than what the software is doing right now? You can ask the owner to make a change to your own benefit but then you're completely reliant on the owner's permission to grant this functionality to you. Free software is different because users do not require extra permissions to make changes and improvements as users already have these permissions by default.

warosu.org/g/thread/S69012024#p69014327
I'm kinda lame at android modding but still not this shit.

When you see someone using the "freetard" word then you know he is an idiot.

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I know completely it is a troll. I'm just putting out my argument for the benefit of other people who don't know about it.

The Linux kernel was written by pajeets now?


Citation needed, and counting android phones or firefox users as "free software" would be a self own given how non-free both of those are.
Lol sure, year of linux on desktop is totally coming this time, no bamboozle.


In theory, sure.
In practice, devs dropping left and right, CoC sneaking in, and general pozzing are all issues that hit free software the hardest: remember how good firefox used to be?

nice try

Are you saying to me that 2019 will be the year of Linux desktop?

Free software is not the same than open-source.

GPL and FSF are political and ideological paranoid cancer that is killing tech, open-source development is ok.

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Use something else.

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"Practicality" is the way of Satan.

Yes, absolutely, you won't get sued, if you modify .NET core code, it's open source. Don't listen to freetards, it's just political and ideological paranoid cancer!

Use these goy, they're open source!
source.android.com/
discordapp.com/open-source
chromium.org/chromium-os

Han's totally right.

I believe that personal responsibility is linked to freedom. This means users who have freedom should also take their own responsibility to modify their software as they need. If they need Firefox to work in a different function, they should invest themselves into changing what they require. Whining that other people are not interested to work to your own interest is simply an attitude of unearned entitlement.


Free software is a political movement that promotes freedom for users. If most technology is based upon subjugating users, I'd much prefer to reject that technology altogether because I prefer freedom. If my rejection of that technology is cause that technology to die, that's not my problem. My concern is getting tools that respect me, the owner of the tools.


Yes, that is a potential option. If you choose to change to a different proprietary program, the problem is that you're still stuck with other people as the owner of how the software works. I personally believe that software is supposed to conform to what the user needs. Well it's perfectly normal for user requirements to change over time as their situation changes over time. It's a real shame when a program is 95% compliant and only 5% of the program needs updating to attain 100% compliance.

Oh god it has to be Lineage

I'm so sorry OP.
Normally you don't have to touch all that bullshit, just write your C, compile, and execute.

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Even if this is a troll, android documentation is horrid.

Firefox also turned garbage because they realized most of their income is from advertising google as search engine, which is also the company that's their biggest competitor. They're now searching other income avenues and are pants-on-heads retarded in that search. (look it up if you don't believe me)

So, free software is not more convenient.
Nigger, one reason people use proprietary software instead of FOSS is because proprietary is smart enough to not insult its customer base.
Accusing your audence of "entitlement" is Gamergate levels of insanity.

I have done multiple females without knowing or understanding anything about them.

Yet all big open source projects become more and more proprietary as time goes by:
The only project that has consistently delivered fully free software is the GNU project and all the GNU programs related to it while "open source" projects have consistently become more and more proprietary.

Your hands aren't female, bozo.

Odd that you associate "hands" with "female".

SHOCKED!

Any dumb ass can do that.

Daily reminder that open source was always intended to be a way to promote the practical benefits of free software while avoiding the morality of proprietary software. This is the reason why open source projects are happy to recommend and integrate with proprietary software.

You're the one who claimed your hands are female. Masturbation with your own female hands doesn't mean anything.

I work in software development. Yes, every single person that I work with has to know git, bash, kuberentes, docker, apache/nginx, and all sorts of other shit that's related to environment and deployment -- all on top of the base language that stuff actually gets written in. Do you know the most horrifying thing I heard about last year? There are teams of Indians with HUNDREDS of "developers", and only 2-3 people who actually know about deployment. Only 2-3 people who even know what Linux is because everything is done on Windows machines too.

Don't be like an Indian.

I feel like the devs think I'm a fucking idiot any time I have to use Mac or Windows.