Windows development

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Template:Current event Template:XBMC faq toc Inline

Team-XBMC have ported the XBMC Media Center software to Windows over a year ago, (for OpenGL using the 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 downloading XBMC for Windows will become a full port of XBMC with all the features and functions that are available on all other XBMC platforms (with the exception of Xbox exclusive functionality such as Trainers, Xbox Game-Save Manager, launching Xbox Games, etc.), so downloading XBMC for Windows will be one version of a multi-platform software.

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.

Note to XBMC end-users! You can help too by downloading XBMC for Windows, testing it, and reporting bugs and issues. Also, spread the word about XBMC for Windows 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.

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

Why port XBMC to Windows (Win32)?

XBMC Media Center (formerly called "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 software media center and audio/video player, originally designed to run nativly on the Xbox game-console in the style of an embedded appliance application. The GPL licensed source code of XBMC 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.

Where to start helping out?

End-users (non-programmers)

You can help too by downloading XBMC for Windows, testing it, and reporting bugs and issues. Also, spread the word about XBMC for Windows 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 allthough not really required knowledge of OpenGL or multimedia programming is a plus, as well as prior cross-platform or porting development experience. You will not need to have access to an Xbox game-console or any costly special softwares in order to take part. XBMC development of this port is well underway for Windows XP and Windows Vista (32-bit for x86 Intel-processors, or 64-bit in backwards compatibility 32-bit mode).

The Win32 development platform is Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. There are Visual Studio .NET (2003, 2005, and 2008) project files 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

  • 32-bit Intel (x86-processor) based computer with Windows XP or Windows Vista, and a ATI Radeon 9200/X1600, Intel GMA950, or NVIDIA 6-Series 3D GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), or later with OpenGL or DirectX compatible video device drivers, (XBMC GUI requires at least OpenGL 1.3 or DirectX 9.0c support to run smoothly at an acceptable frame-rate in standard-definition, to run XBMC high-definition a more modern GPU is recommended).

XBMC for Windows port project FAQ for developers

Can non-Windows developers also help?

XBMC can also be compiled for Linux and Mac OS X operating-systems.

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 (Git checkout is also available). Full instructions for compiling/builing XBMC under Windows is available here:

To-Do list for the Windows port

  • This is a To-Do list of things that still need to be done in XBMC for Windows, 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 doxygen)
  • [CLEANUP - ALWAYS AN ONGOING PROCESS] debugging (also back-port any fixes back to the Xbox branch)

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).
  • Fast load and boot times for end-user perception (other thing can still run/start in the background without the user knowledge)

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.

XBMC developers should always strive to

  • Promote open source - XBMC is based on the ideas of FOSS (free open source software), licensed under the GPL and builds partly on other open source projects which we do our best to support. The GPL should be respected at all times. All code should be committed to the XBMC project’s SVN before any public binaries are released.
  • Promote the sharing of knowledge and collaboration - Through the use of information sharing tools and practices XBMC is a collaborative environment.
  • Understand that development is a team effort - Treating our users as co-developers has proven to be the most effective option for rapid development. Always strive to work as a team at all times. Actively promote discussion on new features and bug fixes, and respect others comments and criticisms with replies in a timely fashion.
  • Apply the Law of Diminishing Return - The majority of the effort should be invested in implementing features which have the most benefit and widest general usage by the community.
  • Try to make all code, feature, and functions to be platform agnostic - XBMC is a multi-platform software, thus any single platform specific features should be discussed with other team members before implemented. Major features should be developed in a separate branch or committed in small increments so that other members have the opportunity to review the code and comment on it during development.

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.

Windows, 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.

Windows Mentors

  • WiSo: Everything Win32 (SDL, not DirectX)
  • Chadoe (a.k.a. Charly) - Everything Win32 (SDL, not DirectX)
  • JMarshall: Anything GUI related, Music Library, Video Library, PAPlayer, etc.

Linux Mentors (also lead developers)

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

Mac OS X Mentors (also lead developers)

  • Davilla: Everything Mac OS X
  • D4rk: OpenGL, other Mac OS X and Linux stuff
  • malloc: Everything Mac OS X and Linux
  • Vulkanr: Everything Mac OS X and Linux


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!