Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Yes, I'm still here.

Those crazy guys over at xda-dev have been asking where I am. I'm still around :). I've stopped visiting xda-dev on a regular basis, mainly due to the high volume of posts there now. I just can't keep up with it any more.

Will I still be doing "JF" releases? Yes. I may (and I stress may) release a JFized version based on a build from the master branch of the AOSP source. In the mean time, Disconnect has released an image based on some work I had done to get google apps working in master, and haykuro is doing some nice work with the sapphire release. I also plan to keep releasing JF versions of new official G1 firmwares (English only) as they come out.

So what have I been spending my time on the past month or two? I've been working on smali/baksmali, an assembler/disassembler for the dex format used by dalvik, Android's Java VM. . The word "smali" is Icelandic for "assembler" and baksmali is "disassembler" (at least as far as I can tell). If there is anyone reading this who actually speaks Icelandic, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Why Icelandic you ask? Because dalvik is named after an Icelandic fishing village.

The assembler uses a syntax that is based on jasmin's syntax. It is close to the format that dedexer outputs, but not exactly the same. There are several changes needed to capture specific information needed for reassembly, e.g. the .register directive, prototype info for method calls, etc. Here is a simple "Hello World" class that it is able to assemble.

There is still a lot of work to do on it, so don't expect anything too very soon.

4 comments:

  1. Whats up jf. I am a big fan of your work. I was wondering if you are going to contribute to this cupcake race that seems to be dominating the g1 these days

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  2. Good to hear you're still out there kickin. I agree, there are so many builds of android on xda now that it's very overwhelming. I was sorta hoping that they would coalesce into a JF super-fantastic build...

    Well good to see your alive still. Thanks for all the time, effort, and soul.

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  3. Just notice that there are new ADP 1.5 images for the HTC Dream @ the HTC website. Do you know if these are Official "cupcake'' releases and are they more up to date than the Haykuro or Dude's Releases?

    Are you going to develop your version of these?

    Any comment will be greatly appreciated as you have demonstrated to be more than expert at these builds and your RC33 release has my device running excellent. Keep up the excellent work!!


    Best Regards,
    Carlos

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  4. Hi JF,

    Was going through some of your older posts at XDA. You seem to have tried clearing up the bootloader and starting up through recovery, and similarly clearing up the recovery and starting up through bootloader.

    Do you know if I have a corrrupted bootloader and a good recovery, is there any way of me getting my phone working? Right now it hangs at the G1 screen and I s'pose it bricked since I cannot go into the recovery or into the bootloader to try any funny tricks.

    ReplyDelete

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