Metr0pl3x on Nostr: GrapheneOS QPR2 Development Update: Android 14 QPR2 is the first release following a ...
GrapheneOS QPR2 Development Update:
Android 14 QPR2 is the first release following a new approach which means the changes are as large as Android 13 QPR3 to Android 14 were, resulting in a difficult port where there may be regressions to contend with.
As always donations for the project and the hard working development team are welcome at: https://grapheneos.org/donate
Read more below 👇
Official Project Release:
This month's Android release is the first one based on the new development model heavily centered around quarterly releases. It's essentially an early variant of Android 15 with many of the features disabled via feature flags. We're essentially doing a major yearly release port.
We were aware this was going to be the case, but it's still going to take a bit longer than usual. This port should be the hardest one since it's the first one. Future quarterly and yearly releases should be much smaller than this one. It should make the yearly ports much easier.
There's going to be a temporary disruption for us from moving to the first quarterly release under the new model. We didn't treat it as a yearly release with lots of preparation but we'll try to get it as done as quickly as the Android 14 release where we prepared for months.
Despite causing a lot of pain for us for this first migration, the new release model should be a substantial benefit to us. It will mean the changes are spread out throughout the year in quarterly releases and many will get shipped disabled via feature flags so we can port early.
In the very short term, this is a massive pain and disruption for us where we need to put in similar work this month as we did for the yearly Android 14 and Android 13 ports. Going forward, things should be easier. It may also help mitigate the issues caused by mainline modules.
Nearly all our changes are ported and we have builds running in the emulator. There's a lot of work remaining to fix regressions and get device support working. If we aren't done by the end of the day, we can do a security backport release. We'd prefer avoiding an extra release.
We're likely going to need to move the end-of-life Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 from extended support to legacy extended support. This is a major release with a similar level of changes as Android 13 QPR3 to Android 14, and we don't want to waste our resources on insecure devices.
Android 14 QPR2 is the first release following a new approach which means the changes are as large as Android 13 QPR3 to Android 14 were, resulting in a difficult port where there may be regressions to contend with.
As always donations for the project and the hard working development team are welcome at: https://grapheneos.org/donate
Read more below 👇
Official Project Release:
This month's Android release is the first one based on the new development model heavily centered around quarterly releases. It's essentially an early variant of Android 15 with many of the features disabled via feature flags. We're essentially doing a major yearly release port.
We were aware this was going to be the case, but it's still going to take a bit longer than usual. This port should be the hardest one since it's the first one. Future quarterly and yearly releases should be much smaller than this one. It should make the yearly ports much easier.
There's going to be a temporary disruption for us from moving to the first quarterly release under the new model. We didn't treat it as a yearly release with lots of preparation but we'll try to get it as done as quickly as the Android 14 release where we prepared for months.
Despite causing a lot of pain for us for this first migration, the new release model should be a substantial benefit to us. It will mean the changes are spread out throughout the year in quarterly releases and many will get shipped disabled via feature flags so we can port early.
In the very short term, this is a massive pain and disruption for us where we need to put in similar work this month as we did for the yearly Android 14 and Android 13 ports. Going forward, things should be easier. It may also help mitigate the issues caused by mainline modules.
Nearly all our changes are ported and we have builds running in the emulator. There's a lot of work remaining to fix regressions and get device support working. If we aren't done by the end of the day, we can do a security backport release. We'd prefer avoiding an extra release.
We're likely going to need to move the end-of-life Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 from extended support to legacy extended support. This is a major release with a similar level of changes as Android 13 QPR3 to Android 14, and we don't want to waste our resources on insecure devices.