[INFO] codeworkx will no longer make CM for the S4.

seanpr123 said:

So just to confirm, people are suspecting the US Snapdragon variants will receive the support to continue development?
I think I saw there will be two of those variants right, the GT-I9505 (International) and SGH-I337 (AT&T). Would they both share the same dev forum or will one version be favored?

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Nothing is ever guaranteed or set in stone until it happens, however:

I believe Cyanogen himself is picking up the AT&T version. I wouldn't expect it to be too problematic to do the bringup due to being Qualcomm-based.

International version probably doesn't have a maintainer lined up yet

Marvos said:

So the CM team is retiring for the time being? They will not develop anything at all for a while?

Will getting an S4 with the Qualcomm processor still enable us to get some custom roms?

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No, the CM team is not retiring. The CM team is 80+ people.

However, the majority of the work on the Exynos 4210 and 4412 devices (I9100 and I9300 and close relatives) were done by a core team of about 4 people (5-6 if you count atinm and others that retired back in the Gingerbread days), with maybe 5-10 other frequent routine contributors. All of those core people and the routine contributors that worked on Exynos4 devices are going to other devices from other manufacturers, or outright retiring for a while.

The Qualcomm-based devices have a completely different maintainer team and those people are likely to pick up USA GS4 variants.

doodads said:

lol at these articles not doing a good enough explaining that all this hoopla is referring to the exynos version. They all mention it in passing, and their headlines are all stupid.

Of course qualcomm version will still get tons of support.

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Yeah... A lot of the articles had AWFUL headlines... There's a big difference between the Qualcomm and Exynos devices, and there's also a major difference between "future looks bleak" and "absolutely not".

For Qualcomm-based GS4s, the future of CM on those devices looks quite positive. No guarantees, of course. If having stable CM is important to you, wait until stable CM is released for a given device before you purchase it.

For Exynos-based GS4s, the future of CM on those devices looks very bleak. No one has yet to express interest in doing a bringup/being a maintainer for it. The maintainers who have worked with previous devices have said that they absolutely not will be moving forward. But if someone else steps up to the plate, it could get support. I personally don't think that's likely - look at the Note2, codeworkx held back for a few months with the LTE variants before picking one up in order to try and give someone else a chance to step up to the plate. Similarly, it's been known that the Exynos GS2/GS3 family were on minimal life support for ages, but we're still active enough to review patches as they come in... There have been light contributions for minor fixes, but not major work being done by anyone.

The only time so far CM has definitively said NO to support of devices has been the announcement that devices with the Snapdragon S1 series of processors would end the line at CM7 due to lacking proper graphics hardware for CM9 and later. Down the line the team will probably have to make similar announcements for other devices (Tegra2 is barely hanging in there due to lacking NEON support, but that architecture's fate is not final yet.)

zoot1 said:

Generally there were 3 developers who maintained samsung devices
1. Codeworkx
2. Entropy512 and
3. Xplodwild
Of them the first 2 have vowed to never waste their time on exynos
Xplodwild is still there but how much time he will have I have no idea..
It will be very difficult to get competent and experienced developers so quickly ..
So initially S4 will definitely be behind in AOSP development IMO


Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

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I won't be in the game for this one, for the same reasons as cody and entropy.

mg2195 said:

Even without teamhacksung I'm 99.9% sure there will be cm and aosp...of course its gonna have bugs...and it will probably take longer to fix them...but eventually this phone will get a fairly stable cm/aosp Rom.

HTC is no better then Samsung with releasing source...actually imho HTC is worse...they actually put hidden codes in the kernel to prevent use on aosp roms...it took months for the devs to figure out how to get in-call Mic working on the HTC vivid because HTC decided to add security codes to prevent non-sense Roms...who's to say they won't do that with the ONE? -just food for thought...

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

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Highly doubtfull. Till date only Team hacksung has been able to bring-up AOSP ROM's on Samsung devices. Yes there are lots of AOSP ROM's for Samsung, but all of them
wait for team hacksung for CM bring-up and use their changes to build further. Even AOKP and PA uses CM/Team Hacksungs device tree's.

It requires experience and lot of work. I hope someone comes up, but since no new dev has come up for S2 or S3 and existing ones are burned out I doubt it.

HTC did not promise anything. Samsung did, on various occassions and broke the promises. Last promise was to release fully working source for Exynos 4 which was given
as BBQ event by Samsung's engineers themselves.Samsung had set target of 21st Dec 2012 for initial relase of sources. Nothing has materialized till date.

Samsung screwed up lot of devices due to superbrick bug and took ages to fix it. They endangered previously safe devices like I9100 with a update even after knowing about this
bug for 3-4 months.

hell_storm2004 said:

How much is the pay to be a dev?? :laugh:

BTW, what made him quit??

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To understand whole story, read from here.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101093310520661581786/posts/cdPnNjLAb4F

It's a nice read.

BarryH_GEG said:

Here's something to ponder. Based on their market share, 70% of Android devices sold in 2013 will be Samsung. If the most recognized and largest development supporter of the Android platform (CM) boycotts Samsung their relegating themselves to 30% of the market. Since enthusiasts (us) make up 5% of device sales, even if every enthusiast boycotted Samsung too, it wouldn't mean a thing to Samsung. And since nature abhors a vacuum, leaving 70% of the Android market unsupported by a credible entity (CM), some enterprising soul or group will create one to capture what CM left behind. And that new larger-than-CM entity will support 70% of the market while CM will be left with the fragmented pieces of what's left. CM's smart. You can see it in the wording they used in their recent statement about not supporting the SGS4. I'm sure there not going to self-immolate to prove a point no matter what any of their individual team members or groups may say to the contrary.

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Except you forget we're a volunteer organization. Not supporting a device would not cause us to self-immolate. Supporting a device consumes a valuable resource: Time. It doesn't provide any significant benefit to CM as a whole whether a single given device is well-supported or not.

Has the fact that all Exynos4 devices are stuck at bugridden nightlies despite them being on the order of 10-20% of our installed devices caused CM to implode? No.
Has anyone replaced the CM Exynos4 maintainers that have throttled back their Exynos4 work to only a tiny fraction of their free time? No... We get occasional contributions from others, but they're rare.