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| 1 | +Implementation notes regarding ADB. |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +I. General Overview: |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +The Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is used to: |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +- keep track of all Android devices and emulators instances |
| 8 | + connected to or running on a given host developer machine |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +- implement various control commands (e.g. "adb shell", "adb pull", etc..) |
| 11 | + for the benefit of clients (command-line users, or helper programs like |
| 12 | + DDMS). These commands are what is called a 'service' in ADB. |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +As a whole, everything works through the following components: |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | + 1. The ADB server |
| 17 | + |
| 18 | + This is a background process that runs on the host machine. Its purpose |
| 19 | + if to sense the USB ports to know when devices are attached/removed, |
| 20 | + as well as when emulator instances start/stop. |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | + It thus maintains a list of "connected devices" and assigns a 'state' |
| 23 | + to each one of them: OFFLINE, BOOTLOADER, RECOVERY or ONLINE (more on |
| 24 | + this below). |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | + The ADB server is really one giant multiplexing loop whose purpose is |
| 27 | + to orchestrate the exchange of data (packets, really) between clients, |
| 28 | + services and devices. |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | + 2. The ADB daemon (adbd) |
| 32 | + |
| 33 | + The 'adbd' program runs as a background process within an Android device |
| 34 | + or emulated system. Its purpose is to connect to the ADB server |
| 35 | + (through USB for devices, through TCP for emulators) and provide a |
| 36 | + few services for clients that run on the host. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | + The ADB server considers that a device is ONLINE when it has succesfully |
| 39 | + connected to the adbd program within it. Otherwise, the device is OFFLINE, |
| 40 | + meaning that the ADB server detected a new device/emulator, but could not |
| 41 | + connect to the adbd daemon. |
| 42 | + |
| 43 | + the BOOTLOADER and RECOVERY states correspond to alternate states of |
| 44 | + devices when they are in the bootloader or recovery mode. |
| 45 | + |
| 46 | + 3. The ADB command-line client |
| 47 | + |
| 48 | + The 'adb' command-line program is used to run adb commands from a shell |
| 49 | + or a script. It first tries to locate the ADB server on the host machine, |
| 50 | + and will start one automatically if none is found. |
| 51 | + |
| 52 | + then, the client sends its service requests to the ADB server. It doesn't |
| 53 | + need to know. |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | + Currently, a single 'adb' binary is used for both the server and client. |
| 56 | + this makes distribution and starting the server easier. |
| 57 | + |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | + 4. Services |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | + There are essentially two kinds of services that a client can talk to. |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | + Host Services: |
| 64 | + these services run within the ADB Server and thus do not need to |
| 65 | + communicate with a device at all. A typical example is "adb devices" |
| 66 | + which is used to return the list of currently known devices and their |
| 67 | + state. They are a few couple other services though. |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | + Local Services: |
| 70 | + these services either run within the adbd daemon, or are started by |
| 71 | + it on the device. The ADB server is used to multiplex streams |
| 72 | + between the client and the service running in adbd. In this case |
| 73 | + its role is to initiate the connection, then of being a pass-through |
| 74 | + for the data. |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | +II. Protocol details: |
| 78 | + |
| 79 | + 1. Client <-> Server protocol: |
| 80 | + |
| 81 | + This details the protocol used between ADB clients and the ADB |
| 82 | + server itself. The ADB server listens on TCP:localhost:5037. |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | + A client sends a request using the following format: |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | + 1. A 4-byte hexadecimal string giving the length of the payload |
| 87 | + 2. Followed by the payload itself. |
| 88 | + |
| 89 | + For example, to query the ADB server for its internal version number, |
| 90 | + the client will do the following: |
| 91 | + |
| 92 | + 1. Connect to tcp:localhost:5037 |
| 93 | + 2. Send the string "000Chost:version" to the corresponding socket |
| 94 | + |
| 95 | + The 'host:' prefix is used to indicate that the request is addressed |
| 96 | + to the server itself (we will talk about other kinds of requests later). |
| 97 | + The content length is encoded in ASCII for easier debugging. |
| 98 | + |
| 99 | + The server should answer a request with one of the following: |
| 100 | + |
| 101 | + 1. For success, the 4-byte "OKAY" string |
| 102 | + |
| 103 | + 2. For failure, the 4-byte "FAIL" string, followed by a |
| 104 | + 4-byte hex length, followed by a string giving the reason |
| 105 | + for failure. |
| 106 | + |
| 107 | + 3. As a special exception, for 'host:version', a 4-byte |
| 108 | + hex string corresponding to the server's internal version number |
| 109 | + |
| 110 | + Note that the connection is still alive after an OKAY, which allows the |
| 111 | + client to make other requests. But in certain cases, an OKAY will even |
| 112 | + change the state of the connection. |
| 113 | + |
| 114 | + For example, the case of the 'host:transport:<serialnumber>' request, |
| 115 | + where '<serialnumber>' is used to identify a given device/emulator; after |
| 116 | + the "OKAY" answer, all further requests made by the client will go |
| 117 | + directly to the corresponding adbd daemon. |
| 118 | + |
| 119 | + The file SERVICES.TXT lists all services currently implemented by ADB. |
| 120 | + |
| 121 | + |
| 122 | + 2. Transports: |
| 123 | + |
| 124 | + An ADB transport models a connection between the ADB server and one device |
| 125 | + or emulator. There are currently two kinds of transports: |
| 126 | + |
| 127 | + - USB transports, for physical devices through USB |
| 128 | + |
| 129 | + - Local transports, for emulators running on the host, connected to |
| 130 | + the server through TCP |
| 131 | + |
| 132 | + In theory, it should be possible to write a local transport that proxies |
| 133 | + a connection between an ADB server and a device/emulator connected to/ |
| 134 | + running on another machine. This hasn't been done yet though. |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | + Each transport can carry one or more multiplexed streams between clients |
| 137 | + and the device/emulator they point to. The ADB server must handle |
| 138 | + unexpected transport disconnections (e.g. when a device is physically |
| 139 | + unplugged) properly. |
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