Develop Reference

Getting the latest source

How do I get the latest Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source on windows?
I do not want to build, interested in seeing core applications/services etc. to learn for use in my own application development.
Is Linux Virtual Machine the only way?

I believe the site you're looking for is http://source.android.com/.
A number of interesting solutions appear here: Where can I find Android source code online?

Oracle VM VirtualBox + Debian 6 and packages - git, curl results in a full-blow error-free repository synchronization.
I doubt there are better ways to get AOSP on Windows.
P.S. Debian can be replaced with any other Linux distribution.

Is there a libnfc android loadable kernel module?

Does someone have the source for Android loadable kernel module for libnfc?
If not, can someone tell me how it can be done?
As final option, if you have it build already, can you share its download URL?
On a side lining question, i read that linux kernel 3.1 actually has NFC support in it. Does that mean if kernel 3.1 was ported to android then it would have inbuilt support? If so, do you know anyone who has a kernel 3.1 version for android?

Linux kernel 3.3 has merged the Android kernel features, and therefore now u have Android kernel 3.3 potentially to come out very soon. NFC supports is in the drivers/nfc (kernel source) directory, take a look at the files that. Another resource found is this: http://appelmelk.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/porting-libnfc-to-android/ and another document: https://docs.google.com/open?id=160clTJ-sSgHiNKd-IsFHGzZY8M9HQudYqHnp0mD09NBTPfZmm9mP_NEMV3E3 (not written by me).

CM7 for Milestone - build from source while kernel.org is down for maintenance

I want to build CM7 for my Milestone but kernel.org being down makes that hard for me since all howtos and repos I found rely on it's existence - anyone knows a quick workaround?
I already asked this question here: http://android.doshaska.net/cm7build - but got no feedback - so perhaps I am lucky here

There is a copy of CyanogenMod sources on github.com: https://github.com/CyanogenMod
Get the kernel source form there.

If you only need a vanilla kernel source, you can extract it from a Debian package called linux-source-2.6.x. Search for linux-source on packages.debian.org. Note that not all versions are available. Ubuntu has similar packages in Launchpad.

Android Kernel modifying

I'm a Android application developer. For some reasons, I should change the Android kernel a bit. But I don't know anything about kernel. I will be appreciated if someone introduce me a website who explain android kernel modules and other info about it.

In the standard Android open source distribution the kernel is distributed as a pre-built binary in the mydroid/prebuilt/android-arm/kernel folder and the source code is not included. The kernel source was removed from the default manifest for two reasons as I take it. One is that it takes a lot of bandwith and diskspace for a platform component that most people will not work with much. The other reason is that since the kernel is built with the kernel build system and not as part of the aosp build system it makes sense to keep it separated. The common branch for the kernel is the one used by the emulator. There are also branches for experimental, msm (Qualcomm platforms) and Omap (TI platform) and maybe some more. If you want to use the Android kernel with hardware these may be more interesting to you.
Get the Android kernel either by adding it to your repo manifest or manually by running:
git clone git://android.git.kernel.org/kernel/common.git
The kernel built this way should end up in the arch/arm/boot folder of your kernel tree (where you put the code from git clone)
Note that I have used the default paths in the above description, you need to change them to what applies to your setup. It has been a some time since last time I tested this but I think it should work.
Go through the following sites which will also give u some ideas.
Android Porting, Android Platform, Android-Pdk,
Android porting in real target, Build-compile-linux-kernel-android
I guess that since you are talking about kernel programming you are also looking for ways to hook up new hardware with the platform and expose that functionality using your framework extensions to the applications. Hardware is basically added as a standard Linux driver so getting it to work under Linux is a good first step. How to hook it into the Android framework after that depends on what type of hardware it is. You could either use a native process to control it (compare the camera service or radio daemon in the current platform) or just spawn a thread in the application that uses your framework extension. For hardware that does not require that much attention plugging it in using an Android HAL library could also be an option

Where to find the version information in source code on Android platform

Where do I find the version information in source files on Android platform?
I tried to find out some information listed in setting >> about phone. Some of the displayed information is, firmware version, module number, baseband version, kernel version, ...

You can give it check in platform\build\core\version_defaults.mk

For cyanogen, the source for this file is https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_packages_apps_Settings/blob/cm-10.2/src/com/android/settings/DeviceInfoSettings.java , it looks like https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Settings/+/master/src/com/android/settings/DeviceInfoSettings.java is the equivalent in AOSP.
From those files, it looks like most of those values are constants or in the preferences, while the kernel is read from /proc/version.

First, the android kernel source code is divided from the main android source code.
The Android version is the build version. It is found in build/make/core/build_id.mk in the aosp android source (https://source.android.com/setup/build/downloading).
The Kernel version is in the top level Makefile of the android kernel source code (https://source.android.com/setup/build/building-kernels-deprecated)