System Requirements for Linux versus Android builds?

1

Why does PostmarketOS only require “a few gigabytes of free space” and no mention of high RAM to build, but Android wants 400 GB free space and 16-64GB RAM?

2

Crickets? OK, my guess. Please tell me if wrong. When you build/port PostmarketOS with pmbootstrap, you’re doing it for one device with minimal bloat. When you build Android, it’s for multiple devices potentially with lots and lots of bloat by default?

3

Don’t quote me, but I don’t believe that pmOS is actually compiled when you build it by default.
It merely assembles a system image using already compiled components.

4

Hey Justsomeguy,

Well, a few thought for you from a guy who isn’t very smart, but tries to teach people how to build android on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yNVe3mjCI1k&t=5s

  1. Comparing apples and oranges.
    Android is build using java, c, and other programming languages from source. As @SkewedZeppelin mentioned, postmarketOS is mostly putting together prebuilt packages. The languages and build systems are different.

  2. Space required for Android also includes syncing a ton of firmware that you don’t need. E.g., you have all the Samsung hardware downloaded even if you build Sony, unless you specifically editthe manifest not to download it.

  3. As for space to build, the final image is usually just under a gig for 64bit phones, and has to include other partitions like recovery, boot, vendor, and more. The postmarket OS download is just system and boot images, so they are using prebuilt vendor, recovery, etc.

I am certainly not an expert on android or postmarketOS, but if you do want to learn more about android building, you are welcome to check out my channel.

Hope that somehow helps answer the question.

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5

BTW, to confirm the pmOS build system, when you build it you are downloading the prebuilt packages from mirrors like here:
https://mirror.postmarketos.org/postmarketos/master/postmarketos/x86_64/

The website for pmOS talks about the binary packages here:

Hope that helps!

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