Google this week formally unveiled Android 4.0, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, at a Hong Kong event that also included the debut of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Developers, however, were left wondering if they would be able to get their hands on the Ice Cream Sandwich source code.
Android is advertised as an open-source solution, but as PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan explained earlier this year, that's not the whole story. Google opted not to release the source code for Android 3.0 Honeycomb because of its tablet-centric nature. Android chief Andy Rubin told BusinessWeek in March that Google didn't want to risk having developers create Honeycomb apps for phones that would produce "a really bad user experience."
"While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones," Google said in a statement at the time. "Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready."
That day has not yet arrived, but with Android 4.0—which basically combines the best of the operating system's phone and tablet functionalities—Google is (almost) ready to release the source code.
"We plan to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it's available on devices," Google engineer Dan Morrill wrote in a Wednesday Google Groups post.
The first smartphone to run Android 4.0 will be the Galaxy Nexus, which will make its debut in November, possibly on Verizon here in the United States.
Morrill's post, meanwhile, focused primarily on access to the Gingerbread source code, which has been hosted via kernel.org servers. A recent hack of kernel.org, however, took that offline and it was only just restored, but the popularity of Android has stressed kernel.org, so Google has decided to move it elsewhere.
"When we did the Gingerbread source release, for example, load due to [Android Open-Source Project] made part of kernel.org unusable for several days. This isn't fair to kernel.org's staff or the community, so for some time we've been preparing our own git hosting on Google servers," Morrill wrote.
Gingerbread source code is now available via Google servers; the new git URLs are listed in Morrill's post.
In other Ice Cream Sandwich news, Google said in a blog post today that with Android 4.0, its calendar and text-to-speech APIs will become publicly documented. What that means is that developers who have been using undocumented APIs will have to make some changes to their apps with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich.
"We recognize that this means some work for developers affected by these changes, but we're confident that Android programs in general, and both Calendar and TTS apps in particular, will come out ahead," Google said. "And we also think that most developers know that when they use undocumented APIs, they're making a commitment to doing the right thing when those APIs change."