Google open sources Android Ice Cream Sandwich, throws in Honeycomb

Google has made the source code and software stack for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) available for download on the Android Open-Source Project git servers. This means companies and developers who are working on their own devices based on the new version of Android can officially get to work.

"This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device," said Android Open-Source Project software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru said on Monday. "In the source tree, you will find a device build target named 'full_maguro' that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later."

This release also includes the full history of the Android source code tree, and therefore includes the source code for the Honeycomb tablet-only builds.

Honeycomb deviated from Google's culture of releasing an open source version of Android's code and stack, and then releasing the "with Google" version, and was never really released as a standalone open source image.

Queru said "Since Honeycomb was a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we haven't created any tags that correspond to the Honeycomb releases (even though the
changes are present in the history.)"