is there any reason to use custom release scripts like github.com/AndroidHardeni over official build tools like "m dist" for recent devices like blueline/crosshatch ?
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It doesn't do anything close to the same thing. The release.sh script has nothing to do with building. It directly uses the official tools for generating signed releases to generate a release. Most of what the `make dist` target does is a complete waste of time.
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The subset of `make dist` required for making a release is `make target-files-package`. It's a waste of time to generate a test key signed update package. The otatools.zip is only useful if you want to package up and move the tools used to generate a release (why?).
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The `make dist` target does NOT generate a signed, production release. It does a lot of useless stuff like packaging up the signing tools from the source tree and output and generating a strictly GPL compliance related userspace source tarball without anything non-mandatory.
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The release.sh script is a thin wrapper around official tools for generating releases. It takes the test key signed target-files-package built by make and turns it into a signed release by replacing all apk signatures, verity trees, image signatures, OTA keys, etc.
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For development, `make -j36` works well. For releases, `make -j36 target-files-package brillo_upload_payload` is the target. The target-files-package is the input format used by the post-build tools for generating releases. Generating signed releases isn't part of building.
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Generating a signed target-files-package from the freshly built target-files-package is a post-build step. The signed target-files-package gets transformed into an image zip and a signed update package. The image zip and firmware are transformed into a factory images release.
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The signed target-files-package need to be kept in archive for generating delta update packages. That's the same to generating a regular update, but with a source target-files-package passed as an extra argument. Updates are block-based so installs remain bit-for-bit identical.
The public release script is minimal and uses a keys/ directory in the source tree. I have additional local changes and scripting for using an HSM for the signing keys. I'll likely eventually move to using a Trezor Model T instead of a traditional HSM, for new releases at least.
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I was actually starting to look at how to use an PKCS11 card with openssl for signing using a yubikey. I also have a Trezor model T handy. Feel free to save me some work :). Thanks for all the detail. Much clearer now. The official android building docs are less than optimal.
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