Report Claims Major Change to Android Development

Android Authority claims that Google has “confirmed” it is streamlining how it develops Android, but there’s no public confirmation, not broadly, or to any other source. I’m sure it’s correct, but it’s odd to have a single publication self-confirming a story it created.

Anyway.

Google today maintains two code branches for Android, the public Android Open Source Project (AOSP) branch and its internal development branch. The AOSP branch is developed in the open because the result is the open source version of Android. And the internal branch is closed because it includes the proprietary parts of Android that all mainstream phone makers use. But some core Android features are apparently developed internally as well, and so those have to be ported back to AOSP at some point. And so AOSP often lags the internal Android development branch, with all kinds of conflicts between the two branches delaying things even further.

This, Android Authority says, explains the change: Google is allegedly switching to a single development branch for Android, which it will develop internally. This doesn’t impact Android’s “open source” nature, as there will still be an open source AOSP release with each Android version, plus a proprietary version of what I think of as “real” Android. Google will also continue publishing the source code for the underlying Linux kernel fork it uses in Android.

From the perspective of those people who use Android-based devices, there’s no change, beyond the changes Google announced previously to the Android annual release schedule. This change will not impact most Android app developers either. But for those that require the AOSP source code for whatever reason, those releases will now be less frequent.

You know. Assuming this is true.