Kodi Steam Deck development

Development: Kodi development (Overview) Android development iOS development Linux development OS X development Windows development

Development

Kodi Steam Deck development

See also: HOW-TO:Submit_a_patch and Steam Deck

Kodi is easily installable on the Steam Deck via Flatpak, but if you're looking to do development on the Steam Deck, this article is for you.

Environment Setup

The first step is to disable the read-only filesystem. If you're reading this, it's assumed that you know what you're doing. If not, seek safety.

The following steps will allow you to compile Kodi on the Steam Deck:

Disable the read-only filesystem

sudo steamos-readonly disable

Initialize the pacman keyring

sudo pacman-key --init

Populate the pacman keyring with the default Arch Linux and Holo keys

sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux holo

Update the system packages

sudo pacman -Syu

Install required packages

Needed to build Kodi:

sudo pacman -S \
  audit \
  base-devel \
  ccache \
  curl \
  glibc \
  gperf \
  jre-openjdk \
  krb5 \
  libcap-ng \
  libglvnd \
  libvdpau \
  libx11 \
  libxext \
  libxfixes \
  libxrandr \
  libxrender \
  linux-api-headers \
  lld \
  mesa \
  ncurses \
  net-tools \
  perl-parse-yapp \
  qt5-base \
  readline \
  rpcsvc-proto \
  systemd-libs \
  xorgproto \
  zlib

Needed to build game and VFS add-ons:

sudo pacman -S \
  acl \
  alsa-lib \
  cmake \
  glib2 \
  libaio \
  libmpeg2 \
  libpcap \
  libpng \
  nasm \
  ninja

Disable Baloo

Building Kodi and depends writes a few hundred thousand small files, so it's recommended that you disable the Baloo indexer:

balooctl suspend
balooctl disable
balooctl purge

Clone Kodi

git clone https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git ~/Documents/kodi

Bootstrap depends

cd ~/Documents/kodi/tools/depends
./bootstrap

Configure depends

./configure --prefix="$HOME/kodi-deps" --host=x86_64-steamdeck-linux-gnu

Build depends (this takes about 25 minutes)

make -j8

Create CMake files

Optionally, link with LLD because ld.gold complains about newer DWARF formats:

cd ~/Documents/kodi
make -C tools/depends/target/cmakebuildsys CMAKE_EXTRA_ARGUMENTS="-DENABLE_LLD=ON"

Build Kodi (this takes about 18 minutes)

cd build
make -j8

Build binary add-ons

make -j8 binary-addons

Create desktop icon

To create a desktop icon for Kodi on the Steam Deck, run the command to generate kodi.desktop:

cat <<EOL > ~/Desktop/kodi.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Kodi
GenericName=Media Center
Comment=Manage and view your media
Exec=env SSL_CERT_FILE=/home/deck/Documents/kodi/system/certs/cacert.pem /home/deck/Documents/kodi/build/kodi.bin
Icon=/home/deck/Documents/kodi/tools/Linux/packaging/media/icon256x256.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo;Video;Player;TV;
Actions=Fullscreen;Standalone;

[Desktop Action Fullscreen]
Name=Open in fullscreen
Exec=env SSL_CERT_FILE=/home/deck/Documents/kodi/system/certs/cacert.pem /home/deck/Documents/kodi/build/kodi.bin -fs

[Desktop Action Standalone]
Name=Open in standalone mode
Exec=env SSL_CERT_FILE=/home/deck/Documents/kodi/system/certs/cacert.pem /home/deck/Documents/kodi/build/kodi.bin --standalone
EOL

After creating the desktop file, make it executable:

chmod +x ~/Desktop/kodi.desktop