[xbmc007]

Is there a way that xbmc could speed up skin updates by only updating the files that need updating? e.g. keeping checksums at the file level (or at least at dir level)
The use case is that most of the time once the first verson of a skin is available, subsequent updates are mostly xml changes but XBMC still downloads the whole thing.

If the user could use XBMC in the meanwhile it would be fine, but sometimes skin updates render the UI unusable and does not provide progress bar (see http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/13356), so for a user who's not tailing the log file while this is happening, it could seem like the update is hung and the system needs restarting

Thanks

[wsnipex]

what you suggest would mean a redesign of our addon system, because its built around zip files downloaded via http. Incremental updates would mean either using something like rsync or having everything unpacked on our servers and quite some logic to handle updating of single files. Imo its not realistic that we do that, but maybe someone has a better idea on how it could be done.(pull from git repos?)

[Martijn]

this idea once popped up some time ago already by TheUni. using git pull or the likes the pull a diff of add-ons and only get the changes.
it would indeed need some major changes.

skin updates do not happen that often. certainly not when they are in final release. only during development they are updated regularly.

smarter would be to prevent the gui from locking up but that also needs changes.

[da-anda]

also, large skins could move the heavy backgrounds/artwork to their own extension and only keep XML and icons etc in main skin addon.

[Martijn]

also, large skins could move the heavy backgrounds/artwork to their own extension and only keep XML and icons etc in main skin addon.

played with that at some point with ronie to have a xbmc.media.graphics extension for supplying the most common images like record labels
https://github.com/XBMC-Addons/media.ico...bels.white

it worked when we applied the needed patches but needed some more code changes to integrated it well.
this could shave of around ~25 to 30mb per skin.

[jmarshall]

Yup - breaking things up (particularly the texture packs) is the best way to go IMO.

[un1versal]

I was kinda hoping (for years now as long as themes been implemented) someone would take interest in making some skin themes installer addon (for confluence at least), which is basically grabs the xbt and defaults.xml named to match put in correct folders, XBMC has supported themes for years and despite themes existing, you cant download any for e.g confluence from skin directly.

It doesn't break anything and can easily change colors or graphics styles,