Android development

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Template:XBMC faq toc Inline You should read the Development Notes before reading this page.

Team-XBMC has not yet started porting XBMC Media Center software to Android as of late 2011.

The Android version of XBMC is expected to require Android 4.0 and utilize OpenGL ES and the OpenSL ES APIs with support for hardware accelerated audio, video, image processing.

XBMC is a huge open source project and it takes loads of people working together to maintain it for all platforms, that is why Team-XBMC is always on the lookout for C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting us with the development of XBMC. Whether you have contributed to The XBMC Project in the past or not, please consider doing so now.

Those of you who are completely unfamiliar with XBMC can get a good overview of the features and functions that XBMC offers for its end-users by reading through the XBMC article on wikipedia.org

Skill requirements and where to start

Proficiency in C/C++ programming language and, though not required, knowledge of OpenGL and/or multimedia programming is a plus, as well as prior cross-platform or porting development experience. Familiarity with SDK and NDK is also a bonus.

Where do I start on Android?

To begin with, download the Android SDK. Review the source code and samples. Read the Developer's Guide. The Android development kit requires the use of Eclipse IDE.

Supported Development Platforms

• Windows XP (32-bit), Vista (32/64-bit), or Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
• Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later (x86 only)
• Linux (tested on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 or later, Lucid Lynx)

Once available, the code can be obtained by cloning the xbmc git repository hosted on Github.

After obtaining the code repository, follow the compilation/development guide in the new repository to setup the required packages and so on. Team-XBMC developers opinion is that the best thing to start with is just to take a look through the source code and try to understand how it all fits together. Test things out, find what works and what does not, then try and track down why.

Hardware requirements

• x86-based computer. No other special hardware is required for development. For Android devices, use of either a virtual or hardware device is supported.