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google-nexus-tools

v5.7 open-source
source ↗ rss ↗ What is a cyber toolchain?

Summary

google-nexus-tools is an open-source command-line installer that once handled setup of ADBADBAndroid Debug Bridge, a command-line tool maintained by Google that lets a host machine communicate with an Android device over USB or TCP, giving cyber tools shell access, file transfer, and app control. and Fastboot, Google's Android platform tools, on Mac, Linux, and Windows. It was aimed at Android developers and hobbyists who needed those tools working quickly without hunting down platform-specific packages. The project is discontinued: its own README instructs users to remove it entirely and switch to Winget, Homebrew, or a Linux distribution's package repository instead, and provides uninstall scripts for that purpose. Consistent with that, our records show only 3 commits in the past year and a last release 415 days ago, despite 13 contributors and 13 releases across its history since 2013. Anyone evaluating it today should treat it as retired and use the native package manager for their platform instead.

How google-nexus-tools helps

How do I get ADB and Fastboot working on a new machine?

no longer through this: the current path is Winget on Windows, Homebrew on Mac, or the Linux distribution's own package repository, each with its own package name for the platform tools

What is left over on this machine from an old installation?

an installation directory that the project's own uninstall script for Mac/Linux or Windows removes by running a hosted shell or PowerShell script against it

Which package should this Linux distribution use to get current platform tools?

depends on the distribution: apt with the android-sdk-platform-tools package on Ubuntu/Debian family systems, dnf with android-tools on Fedora, pacman with android-tools on Arch, or Homebrew's cask on any of them

Is this project still receiving updates that would justify keeping it installed?

no: only 3 commits in the past year and a last release over a year ago, consistent with the README's own instruction to remove it

Languages

Not documented

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for google-nexus-tools, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail google-nexus-tools puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

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Releases

Show

4 entries

  1. June 20241
  3. December 20181
  5. March 20161
  7. January 20141
    Show

    4 entries

    1. v5.7 Jun 29, 2024 · release notes

      Adds native arm64 macOS builds and arm64 Windows detection

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v5.7 https://github.com/corbindavenport/nexus-tools.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v5.7
      • Added native arm64 macOS builds
      • Added detection for arm64 Windows

      2 details in Everything

    2. 4.0 Dec 29, 2018 · release notes

      Nexus Tools 4.0 drops sudo requirement, adds Chrome OS support and external source fetching

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 4.0 https://github.com/corbindavenport/nexus-tools.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 4.0
      • Drops the sudo requirement for general operation (except optional UDEV rules installation)
      • Adds official support for the Linux subsystem on Chrome OS
      • Downloads ADBADBAndroid Debug Bridge, a command-line tool maintained by Google that lets a host machine communicate with an Android device over USB or TCP, giving cyber tools shell access, file transfer, and app control., Fastboot, and other binaries directly from Google's servers
      • Downloads the UDEV rules list from M0Rf30's android-udev-rules repository
      • Downloads the ADB vendor ID list from apkudo's adbusbini repository
      +1 more show less
      • Checks for the presence of curl and unzip before execution

      6 details in Everything

      └──▷ BREAKING ON UPGRADE
      • !The Smart Remove feature is removed
    3. 3.1 Mar 8, 2016 · release notes

      Nexus Tools 3.1 adds smart removal of distro ADBADBAndroid Debug Bridge, a command-line tool maintained by Google that lets a host machine communicate with an Android device over USB or TCP, giving cyber tools shell access, file transfer, and app control./Fastboot packages on Ubuntu/Debian.

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 3.1 https://github.com/corbindavenport/nexus-tools.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 3.1
      • Adds smart remove functionality to automatically check for and allow uninstallation of distro's ADB/Fastboot packages on Ubuntu and Debian Linux
      • Changes udev rules handling to automatically overwrite existing lists instead of skipping them

      2 details in Everything

    4. 1.2 Jan 25, 2014 · release notes

      Adds experimental Chrome OS support for Google Nexus Tools 1.2

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 1.2 https://github.com/corbindavenport/nexus-tools.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 1.2

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in corbindavenport/nexus-tools, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 1 −2 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 1 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 0% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
    6. Open backlog 4 of 60 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 4
    3. Contributors / month 0
    4. Commits / month 0
    5. Stars 905
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • bugs 100%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Libraries its release ships

    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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