[ironic_monkey]

do NOT waste your time working on binary add-ons! i spent thousands of hours on planning, implementing and experimenting with binary add-ons (NOT an exaggeration - i presented 3 working concepts over the years), including installation, building, packaging and backend scripts, only to have it refused for the worst of reasons, fear of the unknown. the team do not want them no matter what they pretend in public.

that being said, you *can* do binary add-on repos on windows, ios, osx, droid today since on these platforms everything is static and the installation format is the usual .zip files. it's just that the arcane build systems in use makes it a major pain in the arse to deploy them. but it is certainly doable.

[opdenkamp]

do NOT waste your time working on binary add-ons! i spent thousands of hours on planning, implementing and experimenting with binary add-ons (NOT an exaggeration - i presented 3 working concepts over the years), including installation, building, packaging and backend scripts, only to have it refused for the worst of reasons, fear of the unknown. the team do not want them no matter what they pretend in public.

that being said, you *can* do binary add-on repos on windows, ios, osx, droid today since on these platforms everything is static and the installation format is the usual .zip files. it's just that the arcane build systems in use makes it a major pain in the arse to deploy them. but it is certainly doable.

at the risk of starting a war in this thread: "the team" didn't reject it. it was discussed at the last devcon, and there were questions from wsoltsys about the need of changing the windows deps to cmake rather than using the prebuilt package system that he did, and davilla didn't want it for os x because he said it wouldn't work for that platform. now both those things couldn't be replied to properly by the people that did attend devcon, but that didn't mean that it was rejected. in fact, how i remember things, is that everyone who was present there did would have loved to have binary add-ons after the presentation and it was just those two issues that couldn't be addressed/answered at the time. i was one of the people who would have loved to have it as you know

PS: nice to see that you're still around

[Kib]

I am as you know a very new member to the team and it was my first time to go to DevCon.
I'd like to offer my experience during the Devcon concerning the discussion of binary addons.

Binary addons were discussed for quite a bit and as far as I understood there was a strong general concensus that they were a Good Thing, but there were still some (minor) details to iron out. There were a few people that raised concerns but many more people that challenged those concerns and said they could be overcome. In general the decision was made to go ahead and get it done. It did became clear that there were some questions that needed to be answered by a team member that sadly could not be present.

It may sound strange because we never met but I was genuinely upset when the same team member left not long after DevCon. I understand some frustration at the slow process forward must have been building up for a long long time and he (you, I guess) decided to leave and that enough was enough. To me it sounded like a whole lot of work being thrown away just before finally coming to fruition.

Very nice to see you back - even if you are just lurking.
I for one still hope to see binary addons support makes it into XBMC.
I have seen a bit of what is possible with them and I am very sure they would make an incredible addition to the XBMC codebase.

[davilla]

I never rejected the binary add ons build system change, I rejected changing the main XBMC build system.

[TechLife]

Until that section is updated, yes. I was under the impression the pvr plug-ins were no different than any others. Unfortunately that is not the case. I can honestly say, I do not understand why or why this hasn't been fixed.

It isn't an exiting feature that is broken or a bug that needs to be be fixed, as it have never been designed to work with binary addons.

It would be a new huge function for the addons framework and API so can not be classified as a simple "fix".

I wasn't necessarily implying that it was a *simple* fix. I spent years coding a long time ago (in languages that are now defunct) so I understand there is rarely a simple fix. Thanks to your reply and the the following replies by some xmen legends who have joined the discussion, I understand the situation now and it makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to clear some things up for us.

---

@opdenkamp - Since we have your attention, thanks for the add. It really means a lot to us.

[scarecrow420]

@opdenkamp, davilla, Kib, since you are lurking in here (and I also echo the thanks for pulling our addon into the official repo!), could you give us a rundown on how things should work for us from now on?

Eg: Now we are merged into the main pvr_addons repo, will the XBMC nightlies start to include our addon? I downloaded the latest windows and android nightlies (19/12/13) and it wasnt present at this stage, although the PR was merged prior to that. Do I need to submit anymore changes to get it in? I looked at the windows nullsoft installer package but it appears it should be autogenerating the xbmc_pvr_addons.nsi file by traversing the build output, so I think that means I dont need to make any changes to get it in the installer? Not sure about what/where to go for android, OSX and linux packages though. Perhaps I was just too keen, and the nightlies from the 20th will include pvr.wmc?

What should we do about Frodo? I do have a PR pending, to add pvr.wmc to the frodo branch as I heard a 12.3 release was being put together, but not sure whether you will allow it in since it is an addition rather than bugfix?

It sounds like binary addon updating etc is something that everyone would like to have in XBMC and I'm hopeful from the above posts that we will see this picked up again going forward and incorporated into a future XBMC (but Im assuming not in Gotham, or is there still time?). If there is anyway I can help with that, let me know. But in the meantime what is the suggested approach for PVR (binary) addon developers to release new builds? We previously had a custom repository/source (Immortal's repository) that was being used to install/update our addon, but it has had some problems recently and also causes the addons to disable themselves if the internet source ever goes offline even briefly. Nobody has looked at sorting out those issues until it was clear what being an official addon means, in terms of releases and updates etc. Im also not sure if it would work to update the addon once it was official and assumedly in the XBMC program/addons directory rather than userdata/addons. Should we continue to simply provide zip files for users to manually download and install/update themselves? And meanwhile keep issuing PR's to get our latest bug fixes etc into the gotham tree for the eventual initial release. Post gotham release, the same as aobve applies though, ie what is the best way for updates to these addons to be distribued, installed, informed to users, etc...

Thanks

[opdenkamp]

the nightly builds will have the add-on from now on. after puling in your PR, it had to be synced to mainline xbmc first before it became included. one of the nice things of not having proper binary add-ons is that you had to wait for this sync ;-)


the add-on will be included in the pvr add-ons repos for frodo. don't know yet whether the frodo release master will allow another sync

[krustyreturns]

Thanks Opdenkamp for accepting the PR.

Just FYI, I downloaded the 20/12 nightly and it still wasn't there.

[emveepee]

buildpvraddons.bat still shows

d4cb4d5c0e7fc1a4b9a3b911c3053df178c36944

Martin

[opdenkamp]

hm right, i thought i had done another push to the PR before merging it. it'll be included in a couple of days

[AidenL]

I downloaded the 30th December nightly build to test the BBC HD channel playback with WMC PVR - I'm getting an error message that the dll file won't load when I try to activate the add-on.

Now is that an older version of WMC PVR I'm trying to activate, or the one that comes with the Gotham nightly? If its older, should I try to install manually??

[AidenL]

All sorted now, and just conforming that the picture is smooth with the Gotham build on BBC and ITV HD channels.

Just need the fast channel switching to happen now

[scarecrow420]

you could also ask margro if he can do a new "margro build" with the latest changes (or at least, that particular change)

[-DDD-]

Maybe someone can fix this Issue?!
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/3932
https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/issues/2848

WMC Addon is activated default and it could not be deactivated

[AidenL]

you could also ask margro if he can do a new "margro build" with the latest changes (or at least, that particular change)

I might message him directly then ?..........