With any update to Android, it can be good to know more than just the major features and changes. Sometimes we've got to dig into the deepest little adjustments to figure out why something is working better – or worse – than before. We've now got the changelogs posted for all of the Android versions released yesterday, including both the major update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow and the much smaller 5.1.1 security updates for October.

The v5.1.1 updates aren't very exciting since they only account for about a dozen security fixes. The changelogs may not even be the best way to read about what has changed because there's a post in the Android Security Updates group that lists each of the issues that have been resolved with this month's updates. Again, the majority of changes were made to the audio/video projects, primarily to solve Stagefright-related vulnerabilities. Note, while there are five different tags, most of the changes overlap, and some are even based on other tags in the group (i.e. r19 -> r20 -> r24).

The real changelog of interest is for Android 6.0 because it contains all of the new goodies. Technically, it makes the jump from 5.1.1_r1 all the way to 6.0.0_r1, but it also includes all of the fixes from previous changelogs, including the October security updates described above.

At just under 27,000 individual commits, it's a massive update, and certainly more than I can read through in an afternoon. Take a look at it and point out some of the notable changes if you've got some time. There are always some clever jokes and amusing comments to be found. I'll try to look through a few of them and get some of the more interesting ones posted later. In the meantime, here are a couple of potentially interesting statistics about common and surprisingly uncommon words in the leading text for the git comments:

4524x "fix"

151 "secure" (or some variant)

10x "vulnerability" (or some variant)

91x "leak"

1x "barf"

26x "hack"

22x "oops" (not including "loops")

13x "stupid"

6x "multi-window"

0x "marshmallow"

Interesting commits:

900fb48 - An optimization that shaves 40-50 ms off of entering recents (Thanks, Dominic Powell)

0d857b9 - Massive Hierarchy Viewer speed increase from 10+ seconds to a few hundred milliseconds. (Thanks, Dominic Powell)

b1ef466 - Epic time savings of 0.1 second during boot. (Thanks, TheManii)

4c9d667 - Multi-window is still around, but in stealth mode. (Thanks, op12)

c0e7879 - Fingerprints can unlock a device, but you still need a pin, password, or pattern to boot up. (Thanks, op12)

59156bd - Google says 'no' to legacy support. (Thanks, skeeterfood)

Great Quotes:

ce4ad0e (look in the code for this one) - "If this fails, we are in the presence of a mid 90's compiler, move along..." (Thanks, ToyotaBedZRock)

Android 5.1.1 r19 (LMY48T) - android-5.1.1_r16 -> android-5.1.1_r19 (Nexus 4, 6, 10, 9 LTE + Wi-Fi)

Android 5.1.1 r20 (LMY48U) - android-5.1.1_r19 -> android-5.1.1_r20 (Nexus 7 2013 LTE)

Android 5.1.1 r22 (LYZ28M) - android-5.1.1_r17 -> android-5.1.1_r22 (Nexus 6 on T-Mobile)

Android 5.1.1 r18 (LVY48H) - android-5.1.1_r18 -> android-5.1.1_r23 (Nexus 6 on Project Fi)

Android 5.1.1 r20 (LMY48W) - android-5.1.1_r20 -> android-5.1.1_r24 (Nexus 6 for AT&T)

Android 6.0.0 r1 (MRA58K) - android-5.1.1_r1 -> android-6.0.0_r1 (No obnoxious variants... yet)