[dooglius]

>Why did this commit get accepted in the commit history tree published at android.googlesource.com?

As opposed to what? Do you expect them to maintain an alternate tree without the change that doesn't match published binaries?

[millstone]

Google has an alternate tree. It’s used for prerelease and cancelled hardware, among other things. But probably not for this.

An alternative would have been to bury the change in “misc cleanup” commit. Kudos for at least being honest.