So most everyone who is bothering to read this enjoys flashing ROMs and probably does this a lot. But as we all know setting up a new ROM is time consuming!
One of the first update.zips I ever wrote was to flash about 20 apps I always used and each time I flashed a new ROM I would have to redownload them or use an app like Titanium Backup to reinstall them.
I found it just far easier to make a flashable .zip and keep in on SD card so after each wipe and ROM flash I could just flash this next and all would be there.
So lets do it together!
First
Make the file structure I showed before, or download my sample.zip from previous post. If its a new folder lets name it apps2install, If you have the .zip extract contents and name the main folder apps2install.
Second
Now we need some apps, lets take a couple free apps (never share paid apps in this forum! or anywhere really) For simplicity sake lets take three apps:
ADW Launcher, Dropbox, and Pandora... all are free on the market and for simplicity sake I suggest you take these same apps.
Download from market and bring the .apks to your computer, do this with either copying them with a file explorer and saving them to sd card, then transferring to computer or I prefer to use ADB. Your choice:
*Method 1... File Explorer
Open any file explorer after downloading apps, go to /data/app , and now copy the three .apks and transfer to sd card.
Now go back to /data/app-lib and copy com.dropbox.android-1 folder to SD card
Once you have the 3 .apks and one app-lib, connect phone to USB and transfer to computer. Then we need to put them in proper folders, again there are multiple ways but play along for learning purposes.
Your file structure should now look like the above, orange is folders, green .apks, and grey files
*Important, most apps store themselves to /data partition, some need to be in /system. Some apps are downloaded to /mnt/asec and not always do libs go into data/app-lib
My point is to know where your apps are to pull them and know if there are any needed libs to make them function properly. This is on an app by app and ROM by ROM basis
*Method 2... using adb
For me adb is faster and I like the command line so if your good with adb I say go this route, if not I suggest reading up on it and then using it or use previous method
So download the apps to your phone I mentioned above, now connect phone to PC and open terminal/cmd and type
Code:
adb pull /data/app /pulled
adb pull /data/app-lib /pulled
This will pull all apps store on /data/app and all app libs stored on /data/app-lib to your PC into a folder called pulled.
If you only want to pull the apps in question the add com.dropbox.android-1 after /app and /app-lib (or whatever the app / lib is titled you want to pull)
And if you want a differemt folder to be stored on pc change the /pulled to whatever you like, maybe C:\Users\youraccount\Desktop\pulled (for windows)
Or /home/youraccount/pulled (for Linux) your choice on all this
Third
Lets write the script, I'm using notepad++ in windows here (currently booted in windows so...), use gedit or what you prefer in Linux, just be sure to write in UNIX format.
Code:
ui_print("Flasing Your First update.zip.....");
set_progress(0.1);
# Mount System Partition
ui_print("Mounting System");
mount("/system");
# Mount Data Partition
ui_print("Mounting Data");
mount("/data");
set_progress(0.3);
ui_print("Flashing Apps!");
ui_print("....");
package_extract_dir("system/app", "/system/app");
set_perm(0, 0, 0644, "/system/app/org.adw.launcher-1.apk");
package_extract_dir("data", "/data");
set_perm(0, 0, 0644, "/data/app/com.dropbox.android-1.apk");
set_perm(0, 0, 0644, "/data/app/com.pandora.android-1.apk");
ui_print("....");
set_progress(0.6);
# Set Permissions
ui_print("Setting Permissions");
set_perm_recursive(0, 0, 0755, 0644, "/system/app");
set_perm_recursive(1000, 1000, 0771, 0644, "/data/app");
set_progress(0.8);
# Unmount System & Data
ui_print("Unmounting System");
unmount("/system");
ui_print("Unmounting Data");
unmount("/data");
ui_print("****Hope You Learned Something New Today!****");
set_progress(1);
This Is an example of your updater-script, it should look similar but it does not have to be the same. Let me explain further:
The first few lines in this script we have gone over, the ui_prints and the mounts, do what you want with ui_prints and use mounts for your devices
#comments - we talked about these too, these will not be read by the script, rather for your purpose.
You also should be familiar with the set_progress, use at your will, not needed
Now you see
package_extract_dir("system/app", "/system/app"); this, like before is dumping everything from system/app in your update.zip to /system/app on device
Now the permissions again, set_perm is for a single file, in this case rw- r-- r--to adw launcher, which was just flashed as a system app.
Then there is package_extract_dir("data", "/data");
This is taking everything from the data folder in your update.zip and transferring it to /data on your device.
Remember we had 2 apps and 1 lib in data, but with this one command we put all on device in proper places. We could have separated the commands, but why bother!
Speaking of why bother you may have noticed that after each transfer from update.zip to device there were permissions set at the end.
Then toward the end of this script more permissions? Why? Well, to learn!
The first command <set_perm> is for a single file and the last commands <set_perm_recursive> were for an entire directory.
So you can set up each individual app or whatever with permissions, or just change a full directory. Each case is different and you will need to asses what is best in your situation.
But yes, there was no need to do it twice here
The last bit in this script is unmounting partitions and some ui_prints and set_progress, these we have covered.
And being this the end, lets move on to our next steps! (save your work!)
Forth
Now we should look over our script for errors, check for proper encoding, and make sure everything is saved to proper directory.
Once all is correct we need to zip it, I prefer 7zip but do as you please.
In windows, highlight the 3 folders (system,data,META-INF) > right click > 7zip > add to archive
Now make sure you set compression level to store, pretty much make sure it looks like pic bellow
Now that this is done, you will see your new zip (apps2install.zip) Great but it is still best to now sign this zip, but not needed depending on your recovery setup.
**Note will soon add photos for Linux (just need to reboot!)
Fifth
Signing the zip, again there are multiple ways, I will show two signing methods, one in Windows and one in Linux. Choose one of these or another method, use what works for you!
**Windows**
I am choosing to use SignApk to sign apps in windows, the link is above and why not,
HERE IT IS AGAIN
Unzip it, put the contents where you want (directly on (C
or creating a path in environmental variables is nice but unneeded)
Put the apps2install.zip in this folder then open CMD in the same location as contents and type:
Code:
java -jar signapk.jar certificate.pem key.pk8 apps2install.zip apps2install-signed.zip
And now you will see two copies (of course the one titled apps2install-signed.zip is the one to flash)
As a side note you can change apps2install-signed.zip to what you want, no need for the -signed but at first it is nice to know which is which
**Linux**
So on both my Linux boxes I use
@Amon_RA's right click to sign script, but have recently been trying out another by
@lithid-cm which is quite nice.
See the second post for a quick guide on how to set up and know that nautilus-scripts have moved in Ubuntu 13.04!
So simply right click on the .zip, navigate to scripts, choose sign, profit