[wcoenen]

Building android requires a beefy developer workstation. Does your friend have the recommended 16GB of RAM[1]?

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/topic/android-building/N1exifTpP...

[FrankBooth]

$100 worth of memory, so beefy.

[fceccon]

Some older computer, like my 2009 MBP for example, can't be upgraded to more than 8gb of memory.

edit: I imagine that people interested in hacking on Android have better machines, so it's not a problem. I was pointing out that you can't just buy 16gb to meet the requirements on all machines.

[_ea1k]

16GB may be recommended, but I have built it before on a machine with 6GB. The initial build ran overnight, and subsequent builds seldom require a rebuild of the entire tree. I think it's certainly possible to manage a small change without 16GB available.

[mariuz]

I build it on a 2G machine also on a 4G machine building process works just fine