I've noticed that the add-on rules for the official repo are a bit lacking. I'd like to see the following rules to be added:
- A forum support thread is mandatory
- Add-ons should limit the number of page requests to a resonable amount
- Add-ons should display new pages in <5s if possible
I have one particular add-on in mind, which is in the official repo. I don't want to point fingers, the creator should get some time to fix this.
The add-on scrapes information from a VOD provider. It makes one page request per listitem, all in serial. This could take a while when displaying >20 entries. After viewing a few pages, the DoS prevention of the website kicks in and the GUI is staying in the "busy" state. The add-on is impossible to use on slow systems like the Raspberry Pi.
This is not only a major inconvinience for the user, it also shines a bad light on Kodi.
(2016-09-11, 16:48)membrane Wrote: [ -> ]- A forum support thread is mandatory
How would we handle it if the author creates a support thread and then never checks it? I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but I'm not sure how this would be enforced (except manually). That would add to the very full plates of the volunteers maintaining Kodi.
Quote:- Add-ons should limit the number of page requests to a reasonable amount
I don't think the Kodi folks should be determining what a reasonable number of requests are to an external site. That's between the addon developer and the external site. One of my addons had a problem where it was hammering a couple sites, and I worked with the sites directly and rewrote chunks to be a better API citizen. That system works well and doesn't need the Kodi folks in the middle of it.
Quote:- Add-ons should display new pages in <5s if possible
Given the wide variety of addons, platforms, and internet connections, how would you propose this be tested and enforced? There are times that Artist Slideshow can take 15 - 20 seconds to load it's first image because of the response time of external sites or the speed of the user's internet connection. I'd hate to be required to put in logic that if AS can't get something up in 5 seconds the user gets nothing.
If you have an issue with an addon, contact the author. If there is no support thread, there is at least contact information for the addon (I'm pretty sure email is now required in addon.xml). I don't like the idea of creating new rules that are really, really hard to enforce just to deal with a couple bad apples.
as pkscout already said, if you think an addon could be causing issues, please notify the addon dev.
doing so isn't finger pointing, it's helping each other out to improve the code. that's what open source is all about ;-)
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-11, 16:48)membrane Wrote: [ -> ]- A forum support thread is mandatory
How would we handle it if the author creates a support thread and then never checks it? I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but I'm not sure how this would be enforced (except manually). That would add to the very full plates of the volunteers maintaining Kodi.
I would love if the bug reports for my add-ons were neatly formulated, with all possible information on my tracker at Github. But that is almost never the case. I think that most users prefer the forum. Yes, you can't force a dev to check the forum, but you can't force him to check his own tracker either. Nothing would change for the volunteers.
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:- Add-ons should limit the number of page requests to a reasonable amount
I don't think the Kodi folks should be determining what a reasonable number of requests are to an external site. That's between the addon developer and the external site. One of my addons had a problem where it was hammering a couple sites, and I worked with the sites directly and rewrote chunks to be a better API citizen. That system works well and doesn't need the Kodi folks in the middle of it.
The Kodi folks should monitor what happens in the official repo. That includes spamming websites with dozens of page requests and unnecessary long loading times.
I wrote around 20 emails to various video providers. Almost nobody answered, and the few who did were not interested. The case you described worked for you, but it is far from reality for most add-ons.
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:- Add-ons should display new pages in <5s if possible
Given the wide variety of addons, platforms, and internet connections, how would you propose this be tested and enforced?
Just test the add-on on a fast pc with a good internet connection. This should ensure that there is no bottleneck in that regard. If the user has a rotting Pentium 2 and internet access by carrier pidgeons, tough luck.
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]There are times that Artist Slideshow can take 15 - 20 seconds to load it's first image because of the response time of external sites or the speed of the user's internet connection. I'd hate to be required to put in logic that if AS can't get something up in 5 seconds the user gets nothing.
That was not the point. There is something fishy if an add-on takes ten times as long (compared to the website) to load content. That excludes slow APIs of course - that's why I wrote "if possible".
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]If you have an issue with an addon, contact the author. If there is no support thread, there is at least contact information for the addon (I'm pretty sure email is now required in addon.xml).
The email adress is not displayed in Kodi or on the add-on overview at kodi.tv. In my case, the forum link goes to a Github page. There is already an open issue about the spamming, created by him in 2013!
(2016-09-11, 20:47)pkscout Wrote: [ -> ]I don't like the idea of creating new rules that are really, really hard to enforce just to deal with a couple bad apples.
Is a link to the forum and a short test in Kodi really that hard? A two minutes hands on should be far easier than a complete code review (a review should discover any spamming). In my example, you had to press the enter button twice to observe such an unwanted behaviour. This would allow to identify the bad apples.
I don't think that a forum thread is too much to ask. The <5s load time is more or less a guideline which can be broken in special cases. The "no spamming" rule should be enforced striktly. It would be a shame if a website starts to block Kodi clients because of this. Spamming also increases load times for other users due to a higher bandwidth and resource demand.
Perhaps the addon is no longer maintained.
Can you try and see if you can add the features you like?
If we had like 20 more people maintaining the repo we could perhaps follow each add-on and whatever with it.
For now all we can do is look at the code, see if it doesn't cause issues and then it's up to the devs/users themselves. We simply do not have the time to do thorough timing issues and whatever. IF the dev is no longer active and the plugin simply doesn't behave we can always mark it broken.
I'm sure most dev would be happy to receive constructive feedback from other dev (as in non team) about improving their code and over stability and speed. Most start out with c/p an existing add-on or at least look how others do it and sadly most learned from the first plugins available which weren't up to todays standards and capabilities.