How to continue testing on local Android emulator after step 11

[wyf18]

Hi, thank you for the great project.

I've completed step 11 of "Building The Tool" on a remote server, and I would like to continue testing locally using an Android emulator on my Windows machine.

Could you please advise how to proceed from this point?
Specifically, what should I do to run or test ViaLin on a local AVD?

Thanks!

[wyf18]

After building AOSP (android-8.0.0_r21) with the patches from apply_code.py, and then run run_gp.py, I encountered:

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: No static method getParamTaint0(Ljava/lang/Thread;)Ljava/lang/PathTaint;

Can you provide a pre-instrumented image or a more complete script to ensure the patches are fully applied and compiled?

[khaled-e-a]

Hi @wyf18
Thank you for your interest in ViaLin!

I don't have experience in building Android remotely then running it locally, I have also not distributed a pre-built image before as I am afraid it may not work on different operating systems or Android devices.

Can you please share your entire build setup (all the instructions you ran in order), and the android build logs so I can debug this issue? Thank you.

[wyf18]

Thank you for your reply! And below is my entire build steps:

Build Steps

1. Sync AOSP:

   repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b android-8.0.0_r21
   repo sync -j8    

2. Install dependencies:

   • openjdk-8-jdk, flex, bison, build-essential, libxml2-utils, etc.

3. Initial AOSP build:

   source build/envsetup.sh
   lunch aosp_x86_64-eng
   make -j$(nproc)  

4. Apply ViaLin patches:

   • Edited apply_code.py to set:

     android_src_folder="/home/yufeiw/aosp/android-8.0.0_r21/"        

   • Ran:

     python3 apply_code.py       

5. Build ViaLin jar:

   cd ViaLin
   mvn package install    

6. Edited java.mk:

   • Injected line calling vialin-jar-with-dependencies.jar with appropriate arguments.

7. framework_analysis_results setup:

   • Unzipped provided zip
   • Noticed methodModelDir missing → manually created empty folder inside

8. Recompiled AOSP again with:

   make clean
   make -j$(nproc)    

Runtime Integration & Execution

1. Copied system.img, userdata.img, ramdisk.img to local Ubuntu 24.04 host

2. Created AVD manually:

   avdmanager create avd -n vialin -k "system-images;android-26;google_apis;x86_64" -f    

3. Replaced AVD image files:

   cd ~/.android/avd/vialin.avd/
   cp ~/viaLin-image/system.img ./system.img
   cp ~/viaLin-image/userdata.img ./userdata-qemu.img
   cp ~/viaLin-image/ramdisk.img ./ramdisk.img    

4. Started emulator via CLI:

   emulator -avd vialin -writable-system -no-snapshot    

5. Adjusted run_gp.py:

   • Patched to use correct aapt path (build-tools/30.0.2/aapt)
   • Fixed apksigner command
   • Worked around device init crashes

6. App successfully installed and launched, but crashed with:

   java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: No static method getParamTaint0(Ljava/lang/Thread;)Ljava/lang/PathTaint;  
   

Debugging

• Confirmed patched Thread.java contains getParamTaint0() in:

  libcore/ojluni/src/main/java/java/lang/Thread.java    
  

• Confirmed Thread.java is listed in:

  libcore/openjdk_java_files.mk    
  

• BUT after full build:

  jar tf out/target/common/obj/JAVA_LIBRARIES/core-libart_intermediates/javalib.jar | grep getParamTaint0    

  No result. Method missing.

• Also verified:

  grep Thread out/target/common/obj/JAVA_LIBRARIES/core-libart_intermediates/javalib.jar    

  → java/lang/Thread.class missing entirely

Question

Despite following the documented steps from apply_code.py and building from scratch, the final javalib.jar does not include ViaLin's patch (e.g. getParamTaint0 in Thread.java). I also tried:

• Copying java.mk to AOSP root manually to invoke make -f java.mk
• Patching Python 2 compatibility (e.g. filter, print, iteritems, assert bypass)
• Forcing rebuild with make clean

Yet Thread.class is missing.

Could you:

1. Confirm whether apply_code.py is sufficient for full patching?
2. provide a more robust script for applying the patches and verifying inclusion?

Thanks!