custom roms vs apps

Question

Does making custom roms involve the same skill set as making apps? Are they one in the same?

Answer 1

No. Custom ROM's require a VERY good understanding of much lower level programming than making an app. virtually anyone can make a app using CS, or ZDE or Netbeans for that matter but a custom ROM expectes a pretty full understanding of the linux core.

Answer 2

No, they are not at all the same. Custom ROMs are much more involved, and involve creating an entire operating system that will control your phone. You need to create an entire image that will then be flashed on to your phone via the bootloader.

Creating an app requires only writing one set of Java files to design an application, and then copying it to the operating system that is already on your phone.

Answer 3

Making a custom ROM has 2 parts in it.

1. Making a new custom ROM (from scratch) and
2. Making a custom ROM for your device from existing source code.

Let me explain this:

1. If you plan to make your own custom ROM from scratch, definitely it would need lots of skills and efforts.

2. Making ROM from existing sources is comparatively much easier than the above one. For example, lets say your device is not officially suported by CayanogenMod. Then you can make CyanogenMod for your device. And this does not require in depth knowledge.

To make an android app, you should be knowing the coding part.

So making ROM and apps are totally different areas. They are not same.

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Custom ROM involves making many things one of them is the app making. If one wants to make a perfect and usable custom ROM he should have a good programming knowledge and GUI knowledge too.

say for e.g PIE(PA) is an opensource if you want to include it in your rom source is avail but if you are good at programming you can do it easily by applying you mod too.