[danvittegleo]

CalyxOS is an awesome project. I have worked with the lead developer a bit over the past few years and it's been such a pleasure. We share some bits of code between our projects here: https://github.com/AOSPAlliance.

If anyone is interested in building their own custom android OS in the cloud (AWS) with same ability to lock your bootloader like CalyxOS, you can checkout my project I've been maintaining for a few years now called RattlesnakeOS: https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack.

And if you prefer to not build in the cloud, there is also a really great project called robotnix (https://github.com/danielfullmer/robotnix) which provides a way to build many flavors of OS (AOSP, GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc).

[bigyikes]

Could you explain why you would build in the cloud? Based on a sibling comment, it sounds like it might be because it’s crazy resource-intensive? I’ve honestly not heard of cloud building before. Is it common for large projects like operating systems?

[danvittegleo]

Yes, building AOSP requires a fairly powerful machine (at least to do it quickly): https://source.android.com/setup/build/requirements. It's definitely possible to do on a local machine with decent specs though.

[busymom0]

How expensive is it to build android in the cloud? And how are the build times? Is it possible to do it on a local Mac mini instead or will that take too long to build?

[foresto]

From memory, I think LineageOS 17 took roughly 8-12 hours for an initial build and 3.5 hours for subsequent (ccache) builds on an Intel i5-3570K and spinning hard drive. That's not including the initial git clone.

The idea might seem daunting, but assuming midrange hardware and a decent net connection, it's very much doable in under a day without resorting to cloud services.

[danvittegleo]

With rattlesnakeos-stack, it uses spot instances and defaults to a c5.4xlarge which takes about 7-8 hours to build AOSP and Chromium (for an up to date webview) and equates to about ~$1 a build. I typically build on a c5.24xlarge instance which takes about 2.5 hours and costs about ~$2 per build. Unfortunately both AOSP and Chromium are massive projects that require a ton of computing power to build quickly. It's definitely still possible to do on less powerful machines, but it's just going to take a lot longer to do builds.