CyanogenMod team outlines plans for L release development

L is for Lollipop. Or Lemon Meringue Pie. Or, in the case of the Cyanogen team, L is for later.

The people behind the popular custom ROM outlined their plans for development based on the Android release preview. In short, prepare for some waiting.

In a post on the CyanogenMod blog, community manager Abhishek Devkota explained why investing time and resources in development based on a preview release isn’t a sound idea:

“We could spend the next 3 weeks working on integrating CM features against this new platform, and then have it suddenly change dramatically and break in the final release of L. This would boil down to a waste of time.”

So, the CM team will take the prudent approach and wait for Google to drop the stable, public source of Android L begin doing any serious work on CM12. That, however, doesn’t mean that Cyanogen won’t take advantage of the preview release – some of the current tasks on CM’s L roadmap are identifying gaps and issues in L release, deciding which features in CM can be streamlined, and identifying issues that could break device support once the stable release lands.

Meanwhile, development continues on CM11 (based on Android 4.4.4), with the next milestone, M8, set to be released this Sunday. Pumping out Milestone CM11 releases will remain Cyanogen’s focus, at least until Google indicates that a final release of Android L is imminent.

So, there you have it – the CM takes the prudent approach, and while that won’t please enthusiasts, it’s probably the best way forward for the project.