Android coming to Chrome OS is one of those arrangements between two parties that just works. Chrome OS as a platform was desperately in need of a shot to the arm or risk being discarded and Android was looking for a new medium to flex its massive muscle after effortless dominating the mobile space.
Android and Chrome OS share several visible similarities ranging from the fact that they both practically owned and maintained by Google to either having large parts of their inearths being open-sourced.
The open-source factor is by the far their biggest strength as both platforms rip the benefits of being scrutinized, split apart and modified by a large pool of contributors.
Every line of code sits on the git repositories of the respective projects and searching through the library can be an obnoxious endeavor as highlighted by AOSP– Android Open Source Project— Engineering Manager Jeff Bailey.
Searching for “it’s all about the code” open source on Google returns more than a million hits. Today we’re introducing a public code search tool for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
The extract above suggest searching through the Android repo (whatever your reason may be) is no simple task. Like Jeff mentioned, there are indeed online tools you could use to surf through the repository but they might not be ideal since the AOSP gets constantly updated.
To help mitigate this annoyance, The AOSP team is partnering with folks who run Google’s internal Code Search to create a code search tool that presents a view of all of the Android source code as you actually use it.
With the tool, you can find links to bug reports, see how features work within Android, make quick searches on non-development devices and so much more.
Though not all parts of the Android codebase can be cross-referenced with the tool, Google promised to add more functions over time.
See the full documentation here.
Source: Android Developers Blog
Via: XDA Developers