external_updater

external updater is a tool to automatically update libraries in external/.

The documentation on this page is for users of external_updater. If you're looking for developer docs, see docs/dev.md.

Usage

In each of the examples below, $PROJECT_PATH is the path to the project to operate on. If more than one path is given, external_updater will operate on each in turn.

Make sure you have initialized AOSP main source code. The default remote for external updater is AOSP.

If you are trying to upgrade a project in other remotes, you can pass --remote-name $REMOTE to the update parser. We strongly recommend updating projects in AOSP and allowing automerger to merge the upgrade CL with other branches.

To use this tool, a METADATA file must present at the root of the repository. The full definition can be found in metadata.proto. Or external/toybox/METADATA is a concrete example.

From within your working directory, source the envsetup.sh script to set up your build environment and pick a target to build with the lunch command. You can pass any target that you want. After upgrading a project, external_updater starts building for the selected lunch target:

source build/envsetup.sh
lunch aosp_cf_x86_64_phone-trunk_staging-eng

Check updates for a library or verify METADATA is valid:

tools/external_updater/updater.sh check PROJECT_PATH

Update a library, commit, and upload the change to Gerrit:

tools/external_updater/updater.sh update PROJECT_PATH

PROJECT_PATH can be the path to a library under external/, e.g. external/kotlinc, or external/python/cpython3. You can press Tab to complete the path.

The following options can be passed to update parser:

--no-build                        Skip building
--no-upload                       Does not upload to Gerrit after upgrade
--bug BUG                        Bug number for this update
--custom-version CUSTOM_VERSION  Custom version we want to upgrade to.
--skip-post-update                Skip post_update script if post_update script exists
--keep-local-changes              Updates the current branch instead of creating a new branch
--no-verify                       Pass --no-verify to git commit
--remote-name REMOTE_NAME        Remote repository name, the default is set to aosp
--exclude$EXCLUDE                Names of projects to exclude. These are just the final part of the path with no directories.
--refresh                         Run update and refresh to the current version.
--keep-date                       Run update and do not change date in METADATA.
--json-output JSON_OUTPUT        Path of a json file to write result to.

For example:

tools/external_updater/updater.sh update --custom-version $VERSION $PROJECT_PATH

Configure

The most important part in the file is a list of urls. external_updater will go through all urls and uses the first supported url.

Git upstream

If the url type is Git, the URL must be a git upstream (the one you can use with git clone). And the version field must be either a version tag, or SHA. The tool will find the latest version tag or sha based on it.

When upgrade, the tool will simply run git merge tag/sha.

IMPORTANT: It is suggested to set up a upstream-main branch to replicate upstream. Because most users don't have the privilege to upload changes not authored by themselves. This can be done by filing a bug to componentid:99104.

SHA

If the version is a SHA, the tool will always try to upgrade to the top of upstream. As long as there is any new change upstream, local library will be treated as stale.

Version tag

If the version is not a SHA, the tool will try to parse the version to get a numbered version. Currently the supported version format is:

<prefix><version_number><suffix>

version_number part can be numbers separated by . or - or _.

If you have project where this isn't working, file a bug so we can take a look.

Local changes

It is suggested to verify all local changes when upgrading. This can be done easily in Gerrit, by comparing parent2 and the patchset.

GitHub archive

If the url type is Archive, and the url is from GitHub, external_updater will upgrade a library based on GitHub tags/releases.

If you have the choice between archives and git tags, choose tags. Because that makes it easier to manage local changes.

The tool will query GitHub to get the latest release from:

https://github.com/user/proj/releases/latest

If the tag of latest release is not equal to version in METADATA file, a new version is found. The tool will download the tarball and overwrite the library with it.

If there are multiple archives in one GitHub release, the one most similar to previous (from METADATA) will be used.

After upgrade, files not present in the new tarball will be removed. But we explicitly keep files famous in Android tree. See update_package.sh.

If more files need to be reserved, a post_update.sh can be created to copy these files over. See example.

Local patches

Local patches can be kept as patches/*.diff. They will be applied after upgrade. example

Email notification

There is some support to automatically check updates for all external libraries every hour, send email and change. Currently this is done by running the following script on a desktop machine.

#!/bin/bash

cd /src/aosp
while true
do
        repo abandon tmp_auto_upgrade
        repo forall -c git checkout .
        repo forall -c git clean -xdf
        repo sync -c
        source build/envsetup.sh
        lunch aosp_arm-eng
        mmma tools/external_updater

        out/soong/host/linux-x86/bin/external_updater_notifier \
                --history ~/updater/history \
                --recipients=android_external_lib_updates@google.com \
                --generate_change \
                --all
        date
        echo "Sleeping..."
        sleep 3600
done