To everyone’s surprise, Google has released the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Source code through the Android Open Source Project ( ASOP ) ahead of the release of their flagship device ( Galaxy Nexus ) which is launching 17th November.
This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device. In the source tree, you will find a device build target named “full_maguro� that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich is designed to run on tablets as well as smartphones thus it becomes a successor to Honeycomb OS which was designed specially for tablets as well as big update for Gingerbread ( the earlier smartphone Android version )
Honeycomb’s source code was never released to public so this would be Google’s first open source tablet OS.
Check Android Open Source Project for more details.