Windows development

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Revision as of 17:11, 14 March 2008 by >Gamester17 (New page: {{Current event}} Currently, a developer on Team-XBMC is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting porting] XBMC to Micosoft Windows (from the [[Linux port project|XBMC for Linux port pro...)
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Template:Current event

Currently, a developer on Team-XBMC is porting XBMC to Micosoft Windows (from the XBMC for Linux port project which uses SDL toolkit and OpenGL). The goal for this XBMC for Windows port project is this to become a full port of XBMC with all the features and functions that are available on the Xbox version of XBMC (with the exception of Xbox exclusive functionality such as Trainers, launching Xbox Games, etc.). This is a huge task, which is why we are making this public request, seeking C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting us with this Mac OS X porting development project. 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 what XBMC offers for its end-users by reading through the XBMC article on wikipedia.org

Note to XBMC end-users! Please understand that this XBMC for Windows port project is in a very early development stage so respect that we can not accept any official bug-reports or feature/function-requests for this Windows (Win32) port yet, nor do we officially offer support to end-users. If you are an end-user and have any general questions or need to get something off your chest about this then please direct that towards the existing XBMC for Windows end-user forum. If, however, you are a Windows (Win32) developer then we encourage you to keep reading to find out how you can help.

What is XBMC and why port it to Windows (Win32)?

For the developers who does not know this; XBMC (formerly named "XBox Media Center", not to be confused with Microsoft's Windows Media Center Extender for the Xbox) is an award-winning free and open source media player, originally designed to run on the Xbox game-console. The GPL/LGPL licensed source code basically consist of a GUI framework that has been written from scratch by Team-XBMC, this GUI acts as a 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 all of XBMC multimedia handling functions such as databases and sorting, etc.. 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 features or functions, improve on existing ones, or fix bugs.

The difference this time is that we are not asking for new features/functions, what we are asking is for the existing code to be ported so it will run perfectly under Microsoft Windows (Win32) operating-system (with the same features/functions that are already available on the Xbox version of XBMC). The main reasons for porting XBMC to Microsoft Windows (Win32) are non-technical, (so it is not that the Xbox hardware is too slow or to old for the XBMC GUI or its existing features/functions), the real reasons are that we want XBMC to get a larger end-user and developer-base, because the more people who use XBMC and help maintain the code (and skins) the longer the project will grow and stay alive. The main reason from an end-user point of view is that the Xbox hardware can not playback native high-definition video (at 720p and 1080i/1080p), especially not if the video is encoded with a H.264 or VC-1 codec. Nevertheless, note that we will still keep the old Xbox as the reference platform for standard-definition resolution video for some time (possibly a few more years), which means that the same GUI (and skins) that runs smooth under Microsoft Windows (Win32) on a relatively new computer must also run just as smooth on the old Xbox hardware (or a old computer that closely matches the Xbox hardware, at 733Mhz Intel Pentium III CPU and only 64MB shared memory with supported 3D accelerator).

Skill requirements and where to start

Proficient 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. You do not need to have access to an Xbox game-console or any costly special tools/software in order to take part - XBMC development is well underway on Microsoft Windows (32-bit for x86 Intel-processors).

Where do I start (Win32)?

The Win32 development platform is Microsoft Windows XP (32-bit for x86 Intel-processors). There is a Visual Studio .NET 2003 project file available in our SVN (Subversion revision control system). After you've done a SVN checkout, follow the install guide in the SVN (README.win32) to setup the required packages and so on. Team-XBMC developers think 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

XBMC for Windows port project FAQ for developers

Can non-Win32 developers also help?

XBMC can also be compiled for [HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code|Linux] and [HOW-TO compile XBMC for Mac OS X from source code|Mac OS X 10.5(Leopard)] operating-systems.

Why is OpenGL 2.0 recommended for XBMC?

OpenGL 2.0 is not the current minimum requirement to run XBMC for Windows, as XBMC will today run with only OpenGL 1.4 + GLSL support (everything else has fall-backs to be runned in software on the CPU, slower than GPU hardware though), however if the future XBMC might be able to take futher advantage of OpenGL 2.0 to speed up video decoding and such.

Currently OpenGL 2.0 hardware is only needed for:
  • Any deinterlacing that is not linear blending (which FFmpeg does in software)
  • Video 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 1.4 does provide GLSL as an extension. OpenGL 2.0 guarantees availability of GLSL).
In the future OpenGL 2.0 might also be needed for:

Other tools and resources

Though any other tools or resources are not required they can possibly help in development.

Development Tools

  • Doxygen - Source code documentation generator tool.
  • Intel® Threading Building Blocks (Intel® TBB) for Windows - Threading Analysis Tool by Intel (free for non-Commercial use)
  • HLSL2GLSL - library and tool that converts HLSL (High Level Shader Language) shaders to GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language)
  • SHARK (Shader Assembly Compiler) - a tool to perform conversion from DirectX 9 pixel shader assembly language into C++ code
  • AMD/ATI GPU ShaderAnalyzer - Support for both Open GL GLSL and DirectX HLSL
  • gDEBugger - OpenGL debugger and Profiler (helping to find bugs and optimize performance)
  • KAGEfx - a framework to load shader programs based on the OpenGL Shading Language contained within an XML file that holds descriptive metadata about the shader and to replace shader modules on-the-fly with respect to their level-of-detail metadata.

Development Resources

Third-party libraries

This is a list of third-party cross-platform libraries that you may or may not want to use in the porting process, you decide:

Graphics and image

  • GLEW (The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library) for OpenGL hardware support version detection
  • Anti-Grain Geometry - High Quality Rendering Engine (High Fidelity 2D Graphics Renderer) for C++
  • DirectX OpenGL Wrapper - emulates API calls through OpenGL commands and other platform specific commands in order to run DirectX 8 application running on other platform than Windows.
  • Intel Open Source Computer Vision (OpenCV) Library Intel's Image Processing Library
  • GLVU - cross-platform C++/OpenGL/GLUT based 3D OpenGL viewer and collection of utility libraries
    • You can use all these components together, or just take bits and pieces that do what you need
  • Glitz - OpenGL image composting library (enabling features like convolution filters and color gradients)
  • SDL_buffer - a SDL extension library that is useful when you have to re-size an image multiple times.
  • SDL_Resize - basic image resizing library, high quality output suited for pre-rendering images.
  • SDL_bgrab - SDL conversion of libbgrab (a framegrabber lib from the same author).

Interactive interface

  • CMIL (Common Media Input Layer) C++ OO framework designed to improve the state of cross-platform input handling
    • CMIL is (or will be soon) compatible with both SDL and DirectX (GPL licensed)
  • VControl - a flexible library for unifying keyboard and joystick input.
  • libmousetrap (The Mousetrap Library) - C library for SDL (LGPL licenced), also see Pymousetrap
  • LIRC (or alternative library implementation) for IR/IrDA (infrared) remote controls support under Linux

Networking

  • SDL_net - a simple cross-platform network library

Convenience

  • SDL_Config - Library designed for reading and writing configuration (.ini) files in an easy, cross-platform way.
  • navfs - Hard drive abstraction layer C library, allowing easy directory navigation.
  • GLVU - cross-platform C++/OpenGL/GLUT based 3D OpenGL viewer and collection of utility libraries
    • You can use all these components together, or just take bits and pieces that do what you need:
      • File libs (glvu/fileutils) -C ross-platform routines for searching directories, and manipulating filenames
      • Thread lib (glvu/thread) - An OK thread library that works cross-platform
      • Timer class (glvu/timer) - Time your code to see how long stuff is taking!
      • GL Utilities (glvu/glutils) - Functions for managing textures and doing framebuffer readback and stuff
      • Other stuff . Various other handy things that may or may not be useful

Technical summary of XBMC

The basics

The XBMC code structure uses a fairly modular design (with libraries and DLLs), 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 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:


Win32 porting

XBMC for Windows port plan

Disclaimer: This XBMC for Windows port of course excludes all Xbox exclusive functionality (like for example Trainers, launching Xbox Games, etc.):

  • Milestone 1 - Get all existing XBMC functionality (features/functions) working as they already work on the Xbox version of XBMC.
    • During this first phase XBMC will only need to be running under Windows as a third-party application.
  • Milestone 2 - Port of Python scripting support, add support for the official Apple Remote with all keymap to fully support XBMC control, AC3 and DTS downmix support, port all of XBMC Virtual File System features (SMB, FTP, UPnP, XBMSP, etc.).
  • Milestone 3 - Add Windows (Win32) specific items (hardware configuration, network settings, multiple input-device support, driver packaging, etc.)
    • XBMC package will need to have all the built-in settings for mouse, keyboard, joystick, etc. to act as a shell (without third-party dependencies).
  • Milestone 4 - Native 64-bit support, XBMC and all its libraries to be compiled on and for 64-bit.
  • Milestone ? - Yet to be decided.


XBMC programming and code formatting convention guidelines

Note! More specifics to come based on ongoing discussions, see Proposed code formatting conventions for XBMC

General guidelines

  • Code documentation (DocBook, rst, or doxygen for the code documentation steps, preferably the latter, doxygen)
  • Self-containment - XBMC should be as little dependent as possible on operating-system and third-party services/deamons/libraries
    • XBMC should for example contain all file-system and network-client (like samba) support built-into the XBMC package
  • Modular design - independent modules made up by localized/isolated code libraries without dependencies
    • XBMC should still compile and run if a non-essencial module/library is disabled or removed
  • Aim for the GUI/interface to run smoothly on a low spec computer (less than 1Ghz)
    • 3D graphic controller (GPU) will always be required hardware for XBMC so try to utilize the GPU as much as possible
  • Avoid harddisk trashing (excess read/write/erase cycles), so no harddrive paging, (utilize RAM memory intead).
    • End-users will be running XBMC and the operating-system on Solid-State memory as a Live CD (LiveDistro) of a USB-key
  • Fast load and boot times for end-user perception (other thing can still run/start in the background without the user knowledge)
    • 15-seconds or less from when the end user press the power-button on the computer till he/she can browse the GUI --pike 06:00, 14 June 2007 (CEST)unrealistic goal for Linux, isn't it?

User-friendliness is next to godlyness

One of Team-XBMC major ongoing goal have always been to make XBMC and its user interface even more intuitive and user-friendly for its end-users, based on the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy. We think that usability is very important for media players like XBMC. Many user interface deciscions are being made by developers who often have little experience in user interface design, in order to improve this, we try to listen to XBMC's end-users for how XBMC is actually being used and how we can improve the user experience. We also aim to do regular overhauls, improving existing features/functions, and scrapping outdated code and features/functions (as "to much stuff" can also be a bad thing).

XBMC as a whole must...

  • Be easy to install, set up, and maintain, (so that the end-users do not get fed up with it and quit).
  • Have an user interface simple and intuitive enough so that less geek-savvy people are not intimidated by it.
  • Be able to play audio and video files that have been compressed using divx, xvid, etc. directly out-of-the-box
  • Be able to and organize audio and video files in an easy and user-friendly way.
  • Use standards and be consistant, (the music section can for example not use completely different controls from the video section)
  • Perform actions in the GUI with as few 'clicks' as possible
  • Require little to none non-GUI configuration (and all such non-GUI config should be via advancedsettings.xml)
    • There is still a little work to be done here, for example RSS-feeds settings need to moved to the GUI
  • Look nice.

Mentors

Mentors are developers from Team-XBMC and members of The XBMC Project that have volunteered to assist and mentor non-official XBMC developers in any non-trivial way they can, helping you by checking, commenting and committing your code patches to our SVN source code tree. These mentors have chosen an area they prefer to specialize in, usually this is an area in which they feel they have most interest, knowledge, and expertise in. Initial patches are welcome, and can and will be merged by the team. If you wish to join the team in an official capacity, please let us know.

Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X port mentors and developers

If you are a C/C++ programmer expert, porting specialist or guru and like to volunteer as a 'third-party' mentor and/or developer then please let us know.

Linux Mentors (also lead developers)

  • Yuvalt: Everything Linux
  • Vulkanr: Everything Linux
  • JMarshall: Anything GUI related, Music Library, Video Library, PAPlayer, etc.
  • D4rk: OpenGL, other Linux stuff
  • Elupus: DllLoader, Mplayer and DVDPlayer
  • Spiff: Anything other than DllLoader/MPlayer/DVDPlayer internals.
  • monkeyman 67156: Everything Linux
  • Topfs2: Everything Linux
  • malloc: Everything Linux

Mac OS X Mentors (also lead developers)

Windows Mentors

  • WiSo: Everything Win32 (SDL, not DirectX)

Contact methods

These are developers forums for XBMC development, (programmers/coders only!).
Respect, these are not for posting feature-requests or end-user support requests!

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