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[[Team-XBMC]] have [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting ported] XBMC Media Center software to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux Linux] a couple of years ago, (for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL OpenGL] using the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer SDL toolkit]), this port is almost as feature complete as XBMC for any other platform and it is currently running very well and stable enough for all people to enjoy using it. The long term goal of [[Team-XBMC]] is that [http://xbmc.org/download downloading XBMC for Linux] will become a full port of XBMC with [[XBMC Features and Supported Formats/Codecs|all the features and functions that are available on all other XBMC platforms]] ''(with the exception of Xbox exclusive functionality such as [[Using Trainers|Trainers]], Xbox Game-Save Manager, launching Xbox Games, etc.)'', so [http://xbmc.org/download downloading XBMC for Linux] will be one version of a multi-platform software.
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<section begin="intro" />Team Kodi (formerly called Team-XBMC) first ported XBMC Media Center software to Linux in 2007, and the whole project cross-platform application was renamed to Kodi in 2014. Kodi itself is a huge open source project and it takes loads of people working together to maintain it for all platforms, that is why Team-Kodi is always on the lookout for C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting us with the development of Kodi. Whether you have contributed to the Kodi/XBMC project in the past or not, please consider doing so now.<section end="intro" />


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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language C/C++ programmers] to volunteer in assisting us with the development of XBMC. Whether you have contributed to [http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc The XBMC Project] in the past or not, please consider doing so now.


:'''Note to XBMC end-users!''' You can help too by [http://xbmc.org/download downloading XBMC for Linux], testing it, and [[HOW-TO Submit a Proper Bug Report|reporting bugs and issues]]. Also, spread the word about [http://xbmc.org/download XBMC for Linux] to your friends and family, we are sure they will enjoy it too. XBMC is free and do not contain any spy-ware nor add-ware.
== End-users (non-programmers) ==
You can help too by downloading Kodi for Linux, testing it, and [[HOW-TO:Submit_a_bug_report|reporting bugs and issues]]. Also, spread the word about Kodi for Linux(and other platforms) to your friends and family, we are sure they will enjoy it too.


Those of you who are completely unfamiliar with XBMC can get a good overview of the features and functions that XBMC offers for its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user end-users] by reading through the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC XBMC article on wikipedia.org]
== Developers (programmers) ==
You should be proficient in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language C/C++ programming language], and although not really required knowledge of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL OpenGL] or other [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia multimedia] programming is a plus, as well as prior [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-platform cross-platform] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting porting] development experience.


=What is XBMC and why was it ported to Linux?=
== Where do I start on Linux? ==
For the developers who does not know this; '''XBMC Media Center''' (formerly named "XBox Media Center", not to be confused with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Center_Extender Microsoft's Windows Media Center Extender for the Xbox]) is an award-winning free and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source open source] media player, originally designed to run on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox Xbox game-console]. The GPL/LGPL licensed source code basically consist of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_framework GUI framework] that has been written from scratch by [[Team-XBMC]], this GUI acts as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front-end front-end control interface] for several audio/video players designed for specific purposes (and those are loaded when needed as DLLs), the GUI is also the user interface to [[XBMC Features and Supported Formats/Codecs|all of XBMC multimedia handling functions such as databases and sorting, etc.]]. [http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc The XBMC Project], (who's members maintain XBMC source code), is a non-profit open source hobby project that is developed by volunteers in their spare-time without any monetary gain. The team of developers working on XBMC have always encouraged anyone to submit your own source code patches for new [[XBMC_Features_and_Supported_Formats/Codecs|features or functions]], improve on existing ones, or fix bugs.  
General and distribution specific guides on HOW-TO compile Kodi for Linux from source code is available in this whis, and there is also an up-to-date README for Ubuntu Linux available in the [https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc XBMC Foundation git repo on GitHub].


=Skill requirements and where to start=
The recommended '''Linux development platform''' is currently [[Compiling_Kodi|32-bit Ubuntu Desktop (for x86)]]. The code can be obtained by cloning the xbmc [http://git-scm.com/ git] repository hosted on [https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc Github]. First use your package manager to install git on your system and then execute the following command to clone your own repository: <br />
Proficient in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language C/C++ programming language], and though not required knowledge of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL OpenGL] and/or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia multimedia] programming is a plus, as well as prior [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-platform cross-platform] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting porting] development experience. You do not need to have access to an Xbox game-console or any special tools/software in order to take part - XBMC development is well underway on [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|Linux (32-bit Ubuntu for x86)]].
<br /><code>
git clone git://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
</code><br />
<br />
After the clone has completed, follow the compilation/development guide in the new repository ([[Compiling_Kodi|README.linux]]) 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.


==Where do I start (Linux)?==
Alternatively, you can [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads download VirtualBox] and follow this guide to install the required software: [[Compiling_Kodi|Ubuntu Desktop (32-bit for x86)]]. Besides from KDevelop, additional development tools that can be useful include Subcommander, Doxygen, Sysprof and PowerTop.
The recommended '''Linux development platform''' is currently [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|32-bit Ubuntu Desktop (for x86)]]. There is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdevelop Kdevelop] project file available in our [http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=87054 SVN (Subversion revision control system)]. After you have done a [http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=87054 SVN checkout], follow the install guide in the SVN ([[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|README.linux]]) 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.


Alternatively, you can download a finished VMware Virtual Machine (VM) and run that in the free [http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html VMware Player] (or use in VMware Workstation, or VMware Server), this is a little bit old now but can still be usefull to those of you that that absolutly new to developing on Linux. The VM available for download below is based on [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|Ubuntu Desktop (32-bit for x86)]], and all the prerequisite software is installed (including KDevelop). Performance is not great using this, as there is no 3D hardware acceleration support under a virtual machine, however it should work good enough to get a lot of development tasks done without you having to bother with install of Ubuntu Desktop yourself. Nice is also that you can install/run [http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html VMware Player 2.0 and later] under Linux as well as Microsoft Windows (including Windows Vista), 32-bit and 64-bit operating-system. The free [http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html VMware Player 2.0 and later] also enables you to share data seamlessly between the virtual machine and host computer, and also allows you to directly access USB 2.0 devices from within the virtual machine, (experimental support for 2-way Virtual SMP to assign more than a single CPU to a virtual machine is also available for testing purposes).
The performance of a virtual machine is not great, as there is no 3D hardware acceleration support under a virtual machine, however it should work good enough to get a lot of development tasks done. Nice is also that you can install/run [https://www.virtualbox.org/ VirtualBox] on Windows, OS X and Linux. The free VirtualBox also enables you to share data seamlessly between the virtual machine and host computer, and also allows you to directly access USB 2.0 devices from within the virtual machine. To improve the performance of your virtual machine, you can increase the number of cores on a multi-core system that is assigned to your virtual machine.


:*Download: [http://www.aceshome.com/xbmcdev.zip VMware Virtual Machine (VM) with Ubuntu Desktop 7.04 and KDevelop] (userid/password is: xbmc/xbmc).
=== Hardware requirements ===
:**Besides from KDevelop, additional development tools included are Subcommander, Doxygen, Sysprof, and PowerTop.
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 x86-based computer] (if you don't know what it means, you probably have one). No special hardware is required for development, as developers can compile using the "''make sdl_2d option''" (see [[Compiling_Kodi|README.linux]]). However for end-users the recommended minimum requirement is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Processing_Unit 3D GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)] that at least supports [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shader_model Shader Model 3.0] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL OpenGL 2.0] (that features 24bpp or 32bpp for 3D hardware-acceleration support, which the XBMC GUI needs to run smoothly at an acceptable frame-rate). Graphic adapters that support [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX DirectX version 9.0c] or later usually meet all of those mentioned requirements, (Team Kodi recommends [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce 6150 or later] as NVIDIA is currently the manufacturer that offers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_hardware_and_FOSS good device-drivers for Linux] (and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce 6150 or later] supports OpenGL 2.0).
:***Note! In order for the PowerTop tool to actually show data, a new kernel needs to be built by yourself.  
:**Our thanks goes out to [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=26664 tssgery] for creating and hosting this first VM for the XBMC Linux port development effort.


===Hardware requirements===
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86 x86-based computer]. No other special hardware is required for development, as developers can compile using the "''make sdl_2d option''" (see [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|README.linux]]). However for end-users the recommended minimum requirement is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Processing_Unit 3D GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)] that at least supports [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shader_model Shader Model 3.0] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL OpenGL 2.0] (that features 24bpp or 32bpp for 3D hardware-acceleration support, which XBMC GUI need to run smoothly at an acceptable frame-rate). Graphic adapters that support [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX DirectX version 9.0c] or later usually meet all of those mentioned requirements, ([[Team-XBMC]] recommends [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce 6150 or later] as NVIDIA are currently the manufacturer that offers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_hardware_and_FOSS good device-drivers for Linux] (and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce 6150 or later] supports OpenGL 2.0).


==XBMC Linux port FAQ for developers==
===Can non-Linux developers also help?===
XBMC can also be compiled for [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Windows from source code|Win32 (Microsoft Windows) operating-systems]] with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio Microsoft Visual Studio], or for [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Mac OS X from source code|Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)]], so even though Team-XBMC will be focusing on the Linux port of XBMC, it will not hurt if some people who prefer and feel comfortable with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio Microsoft Visual Studio] or Eclipse as a development platform also volunteer to help with getting the [[XBMC for Windows port project|XBMC for Windows]] and [[XBMC for Mac OS X port project|XBMC for Mac]] builds up to par with the Linux and Xbox versions of XBMC, this as a preparation for possible future cross-platform versions of XBMC.
* [[XBMC for Windows port project]]
** [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Windows from source code]]
* [[XBMC for Mac OS X port project]]
** [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Mac OS X from source code]]


===Why is OpenGL 2.0 needed for XBMC?===
[[Category:Development]]
OpenGL 2.0 is not really the current minimum requirement to run XBMC for Linux, as in reality XBMC will today run with only OpenGL 1.3 + [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLSL GLSL] support (everything else has fall-backs to be runned in software on the CPU, slower than GPU hardware though), however to be sure to stay future-proof Team-XBMC have decided that the OpenGL 2.0 is the recommended minimum requirement.
[[Category:Linux]]
 
:'''Currently OpenGL 2.0 hardware is only needed for:'''
* Any deinterlacing that is not linear blending (which FFmpeg does in software)
* Video [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_post-processing video post-processing filtering] (bicubic upscaling, etc.)
* Non-power of two textures for the GUI (using NPOT saves a lot of texture memory)
* Hardware accelerated YUV 2 RGB conversion (actually GLSL is needed for this, and a few GPU hardware implementations as low as OpenGL 1.3 does provide GLSL as an extension. OpenGL 2.0 guarantees availability of GLSL).
:'''In the future OpenGL 2.0 might also be needed for:'''
* More [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_post-processing video post-processing filters] to improve visual quality perception.
* [[Hardware Accelerated Video Decoding]] (using the GPU hardware to assist with video decoding)
 
=Other tools and resources=
Though any other tools or resources are not required they can possibly help in development.
==Development Tools==
* [http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/ Doxygen] - Source code documentation generator tool.
* [http://valgrind.org Valgrind] (for Linux) - a free Linux programming tool for memory debugging, memory leak detection, and profiling.
* [http://www.daimi.au.dk/~sandmann/sysprof/ Sysprof] (for Linux) - a free System-wide Linux Profiler for tracking CPU usage. Sysprof is a sampling CPU profiler for Linux that uses a kernel module to profile the entire system, not just a single application. Sysprof handles shared libraries and applications do not need to be recompiled. In fact they don't even have to be restarted. Just insert the kernel module and start sysprof.
 
=Technical summary of XBMC=
==The basics==
The XBMC code structure uses a fairly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_%28programming%29 modular design] (with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_%28computing%29 libraries] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library DLL]s), and we think that there are enough modules/libraries to keep a wide skill-level range of developers busy for a while in the porting of them all. So please, take a look at the source code, then with the help of our To-Do list (see further down in this article) assess where the porting stage is today and think about where and how you can try to help out. Note that we are not planning on completely abandoning the Xbox hardware any time soon - XBMC will be a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform cross-platform] software application, using the same code on multiple hardware platforms, (the 'old' Xbox still have a good amount of years to live we hope).
 
==Detailed technical information==
For more details please visit the [[Development Notes]] section of this manual.
 
==The XBMC source code==
The XBMC source code is in our SVN repository on sourceforge.net. Full instructions for compiling/builing XBMC under Linux is available here:
* [[HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code]]
 
=To-Do list for the XBMC Linux port=
This is a '''To-Do list''' of things that still need to be done in '''XBMC for Linux''', anyone is more than welcome to help out with any of these tasks:
====Cleanup To-Do Tasks====
* [CLEANUP - ALWAYS AN ONGOING PROCESS] Document (doxygenize) all of the current/existing code (using [http://www.doxygen.org doxygen])
* [CLEANUP - ALWAYS AN ONGOING PROCESS] [http://valgrind.org/ Valgrind] debugging (also back-port any fixes to the Xbox and Win32 code branch)
 
 
[[category:Inner Workings]]
[[category:Development]]
[[category:Skin Development]]
[[category:Linux]]
[[category:XBMC Live]]
[[category:Mac OS X]]
[[category:OpenGL]]
[[category:To-Do]]
[[category:Google Summer of Code]]

Latest revision as of 20:22, 7 December 2020

Home icon grey.png   ▶ Development
▶ Linux		 ▶ Linux development
Cleanup.png This page or section may require cleanup, updating, spellchecking, reformatting and/or updated images. Please improve this page if you can. The discussion page may contain suggestions.


Development:

Team Kodi (formerly called Team-XBMC) first ported XBMC Media Center software to Linux in 2007, and the whole project cross-platform application was renamed to Kodi in 2014. Kodi itself is a huge open source project and it takes loads of people working together to maintain it for all platforms, that is why Team-Kodi is always on the lookout for C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting us with the development of Kodi. Whether you have contributed to the Kodi/XBMC project in the past or not, please consider doing so now.


End-users (non-programmers)

You can help too by downloading Kodi for Linux, testing it, and reporting bugs and issues. Also, spread the word about Kodi for Linux(and other platforms) to your friends and family, we are sure they will enjoy it too.

Developers (programmers)

You should be proficient in C/C++ programming language, and although not really required knowledge of OpenGL or other multimedia programming is a plus, as well as prior cross-platform or porting development experience.

Where do I start on Linux?

General and distribution specific guides on HOW-TO compile Kodi for Linux from source code is available in this whis, and there is also an up-to-date README for Ubuntu Linux available in the XBMC Foundation git repo on GitHub.

The recommended Linux development platform is currently 32-bit Ubuntu Desktop (for x86). The code can be obtained by cloning the xbmc git repository hosted on Github. First use your package manager to install git on your system and then execute the following command to clone your own repository:

git clone git://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git

After the clone has completed, follow the compilation/development guide in the new repository (README.linux) 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.

Alternatively, you can download VirtualBox and follow this guide to install the required software: Ubuntu Desktop (32-bit for x86). Besides from KDevelop, additional development tools that can be useful include Subcommander, Doxygen, Sysprof and PowerTop.

The performance of a virtual machine is not great, as there is no 3D hardware acceleration support under a virtual machine, however it should work good enough to get a lot of development tasks done. Nice is also that you can install/run VirtualBox on Windows, OS X and Linux. The free VirtualBox also enables you to share data seamlessly between the virtual machine and host computer, and also allows you to directly access USB 2.0 devices from within the virtual machine. To improve the performance of your virtual machine, you can increase the number of cores on a multi-core system that is assigned to your virtual machine.

Hardware requirements

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