How to write drivers for Android?

Ashok Jeev picture Ashok Jeev · Feb 10, 2011 · Viewed 44.4k times · Source

I have been trying to know about android driver development. I know driver development is not an easy job but I'd like to learn. Is there any tutorials for that or any simple examples??

Answer

John Chadwick picture John Chadwick · Feb 10, 2011

I'm assuming you mean drivers for the Linux kernel used by Android? I'm fairly sure most of the Android system interfaces with the Linux kernel to access hardware. For example, it relies on the framebuffer device for display, which is powered by a Linux framebuffer driver.

In this case, you need to root your device to get the proper privileges. Next, you need to determine the version of the Linux kernel, then obtain a copy of it.

There's a lot of documentations on kernel development, and plenty of code to look through, but it's not an easy task, and you probably won't want to do it. If you have all of the necessary knowledge of the hardware, it might be a possibility.

edit: Ah, here; this might help you a bit: http://source.android.com/porting/display_drivers.html (there should be more information on other drivers from there on.)