Updater

Simple application to download and apply OTA packages.

Server requirements

The app sends GET requests to the URL defined by the updater_server_url resource (or the lineage.updater.uri system property) and expects as response a JSON with the following structure:

[
  {
    "datetime": 1781858358,
    "files": [
      {
        "filename": "ota-package.zip",
        "os_patch_level": "2026-06-01",
        "os_sdk_level": 36,
        "ota_property_files": "payload_metadata.bin:4662:187245,payload.bin:4662:1926274191,payload_properties.txt:1926278911:156,apex_info.pb:2220:1279,care_map.pb:3546:1069,metadata:69:683,metadata.pb:820:1352                        ",
        "sha256": "11468fc263696b8bc0afd35861c35d62a562ba29722447a3972c39f0023deb7f",
        "size": 1926282058,
        "url": "https://example.com/full/ota-package.zip"
      }
    ],
    "type": "nightly",
    "version": "23.2"
  }
]

The datetime attribute is the build date expressed as UNIX timestamp.
The files[0].filename attribute is the name of the file to be downloaded.
The files[0].os_patch_level optional attribute is the security patch level of the OTA update.
The files[0].os_sdk_level optional attribute is the SDK level of the OTA update.
The files[0].ota_property_files optional attribute is the ota-property-files value from META-INF/com/android/metadata of the OTA update.
The files[0].sha256 attribute is a sha256 of the OTA update.
The files[0].size attribute is the size of the update expressed in bytes.
The files[0].url attribute is the URL of the file to be downloaded.
The type attribute is the string to be compared with the ro.lineage.releasetype property.
The version attribute is the string to be compared with the ro.lineage.build.version property.

Additional attributes are ignored.

Build with Android Studio

Updater needs access to the system API, therefore it can't be built only using the public SDK. You first need to generate the libraries with all the needed classes. The application also needs elevated privileges, so you need to sign it with the right key to update the one in the system partition. To do this:

• Place this directory anywhere in the Android source tree
• Generate a keystore and keystore.properties using gen-keystore.sh
• Build the platform artifacts that provide the non-public classes used by the app. At minimum, the jars copied by pull-system-libs.sh must exist under out/soong/.intermediates/
• Run ./pull-system-libs.sh from this directory. By default it reads from ../../../out relative to this repository path and will populate system_libs/ with the jars Gradle expects:
  • framework.jar
  • SettingsLib.jar
  • SpaLib.jar
• If your build output lives somewhere else, pass it explicitly: ./pull-system-libs.sh /path/to/out

You need to do the above once, unless Android Studio can't find some symbol. In that case, rebuild the relevant platform targets and rerun ./pull-system-libs.sh.