HTC phones have a separate recovery partition, allowing recoveries such as TWRP to be flashed independent of the rom installed.
However, most samsung phones (excluding nexus') must have the recovery built into the kernel, making recoveries such as TWRP uncommon.
This tutorial will hopefully make this a problem of the past.
Note: throughout the tutorial I will use folders such as
~/CM7 and ~/CM9 to refer to my android source trees (replace with yours, usually ~/android/system)
and captivatemtd to refer to my device (replace with your samsung model)
Also: if you have any problems feel free to hop into #twrp on irc.freenode.net for some IRC help
I (or my bouncer) will always be on, so feel free to msg me.
TWRP is only designed to be made against the CM7 tree so we will set that up.
Go ahead and follow the cyanogenmod wiki to setup your build environment
(ex: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Samsung_Captivate:_Compile_CyanogenMod_(Linux))
A completed install should have the necessary programs to build, the full repo synced, proprietary files for your vendor and phone, and prebuilts such as rom manager.
Next we must add some extra folders used by TWRP
clone https://github.com/Dees-Troy/TWRP2-CM7_external_libjpeg to ~/CM7/external/libjpeg
clone https://github.com/Dees-Troy/TWRP2-CM7_external_pigz to ~/CM7/external/pigz
Now we have to replace three of the stock CM7 folders, with ones modified by TWRP. replace
~/CM7/bootable/recovery with https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project
~/CM7/build with https://github.com/Dees-Troy/TWRP2-CM7_build
~/CM7/external/busybox with https://github.com/Dees-Troy/TWRP2-CM7_external_busybox
Finally, we have to modify some device files
cd to ~/CM7/device/samsung/aries-common and edit recovery.rc
under on init and # setup the global environment make the two lines look like below
export PATH /sbin:/vendor/bin:/system/sbin:/system/bin:/system/xbin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH /sbin:/vendor/lib:/system/lib
at the end of the BoardConfigCommon.mk file add (change to your screen size)
(may also have to add this line to BoardConfig.mk in ~/CM7/device/samsung/captivate)
DEVICE_RESOLUTION := 480x800
Your CM7 tree is now ready to build TWRP, so lets make some ramdisks
cd to ~/CM7 and run
. build/envsetup.sh && lunch full_captivatemtd-eng && make bootimage
This command should have built a new CM7 kernel with new recovery ramdisks.
From here you can flash the kernel (stored as ~/CM7/device/samsung/captivate/kernel),
or create a flashable CM7 zip with brunch captivatemtd
Either way, everything made should have TWRP in it.
TWRP was made for CM7 and will only compile on a CM7 android tree,
therefore if you want to get working TWRP on CM9 you must follow the CM7 instructions above
(Or use the prebuilt ramdisks I provided for some devices)
Go ahead and setup CM9 following some tutorial online
Next add the two folders and edit the device config files as shown in the CM7 section above
(but do not replace ~/CM9/bootable/recovery ~/CM9/build or ~/external/busybox)
From here you can build initramfs using the same command as CM7 (but in the CM9 folder)
Now that we have CM9 ramdisks we can make a working CM9 kernel.
Each boot.img kernel is actaully three parts a zImage (actual kernel), ramdisk.img (drivers and stuff), and ramdisk-recovery.img (recovery).
We will make a kernel using CM9 zImage and ramdisks, but use the CM7 recovery ramdisk.
In glitch.sh for the Glitch kernel (not sure where else for others), there should be a line that looks like
$repo/device/samsung/aries-common/mkshbootimg.py $KERNEL_DIR/release/boot.img
"$target_dir"/arch/arm/boot/zImage
$repo/out/target/product/$target/ramdisk.img
**$repo/out/**target/product/$target/ramdisk-recovery.img
you can edit the third parameter to point to the ramdisk-recovery in CM7 not CM9, EX:
$repo/device/samsung/aries-common/mkshbootimg.py $KERNEL_DIR/release/boot.img
"$target_dir"/arch/arm/boot/zImage
$repo/out/target/product/$target/ramdisk.img
**~/CM7/**out/target/product/$target/ramdisk-recovery.img
from here you should be able to build your CM9 kernel with TWRP
cd ~/CM9 && make out/target/product/captivatemtd/boot.img
Then flash the kernel stored as ~/CM9/out/target/product/captivatemtd/boot.img
Now boot into your new CM9 kernel (with CM9 ramdisk), or reboot into TWRP (compiled on CM7)
Enjoy!
Document changes to use CM7 recovery ramdisk on stock (non-glitch) kernel.
Fix backup and restore errors (cannot create folder errno=22)
Misc.