Well folks, time to let the good times roll and the custom ROMs flow. HTC has recently released the full kernel source code for the HTC Thunderbolt, although this isn’t for Froyo, no, this is for the recently released Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Now all of the hackers and tinkerers that make our custom ROM’s can get to work on the Gingerbread aspects of things. Good news for Thunderbolt users indeed.

Shown in the image below the source has finally been released and is available for download, coming in at just 89MB it shouldn’t take too long and we can expect developers are already knee deep in code. While this isn’t a big deal for the average consumer, all the users that make custom ROM’s or overclocking kernels and all those other things we love to mess with on Android, the source code is a big part of that. HTC hasn’t been the fastest to release in the recent past but we are glad to see this Gingerbread build arrive so quickly after the OTA (although the OTA did take forever.)

If tweaking and enjoying Gingerbread isn’t your thing now the cold and tasty Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is here there is also a 4.0 ICS SDK port for the Thunderbolt and if you’d like to give that a try more details are available here. Give all those developers and ROM makers a few days to sift through the kernel source code and I’m sure we’ll be seeing plenty of good things come out of XDA and RootzWiki soon be ready for some flashing.

HTCdev files

[device id=65] [via Phandroid]