2019-03-20, 20:09
Hi. My name is Alex and I'm a big Kodi fan and user! I just found out that Kodi is participating at this year's GSOC and I would be proud to be part of it.
Since I'm actively developing Kodi addons for the official repositories (see here for an overview of my personal Kodi addons: https://github.com/goggle/goggle-kodi-addons), my interest lies in improving and simplifying the submission process for Kodi addon developers.
Currently, the process for submitting addons to the official repositories is time-consuming and can be very complicated for new addon developers: The addon developer needs to maintain a personal fork of the official "repo-plugins" git repository from Github with many different branches. The addon can then be included into this forked repository by git subtree merging as described in the Kodi wiki: https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Create_add...ee_Merging. Here the submitter needs to distinguish between a "First time setup" and "Updating an already existing addon to a new version". After the changes have been pushed onto the users Github branch, one needs to log in to Github, open a pull request and carefully choose the correct branches for both repositories. After completing the description template, the user can finally submit the pull request. Now, the addon-checker will scan the submitted code for incompatibilities and the code reviewer will give detailed advice to improve the code. After the user has committed and pushed all the requested changes, the reviewer asks to squash the commits into one commit with the correct commit message. Also this step can be quite cumbersome for a user with not that much git experience. Finally, if everything goes well, the changes will be included in the official Kodi plugin repository.
This whole process should be a lot easier! As suggested in the project idea "4.5.2 Addon submissions", I would like to create a tool that leads the addon submitter through this whole process in the user-friendliest way. In my opinion, a command-line tool (preferably written in Python) would be a great solution. Running the tool should be as simple as
or
After that, the tool will ask some questions (which Kodi version, etc.), run the kodi-addon-checker (https://github.com/xbmc/addon-check), suggest a suitable commit message and finally open a new pull request in the author's name. Also the review process should be as easy as just running the same command again, after having included the requested changes into the code.
If it is desired to have an additional graphical user interface to lead the addon developer through the submission process, I would suggest to build that using PyQt or PySide, and use the command-line utility as a library for it. Since Qt runs on every common developer platform (Mac, Windows, Linux), that would be a good choice in my opinion. Right now, I don't see too many advantages in having a GUI instead of a easy-to-use command-line tool, so I would like to ask what the possible mentors and other Kodi core developers think about this?
A web application to submit the addons would be really nice too, but here I have the most questions. First of all, where should the submission process happen: On the client's side or on the server?
If it runs on the server, I guess we could run the Python code from the command-line library. But this would mean that the server must be allowed to make a pull request in the author's name. Is that possible with Github's authentication API? Furthermore, the user needs to upload the whole addon (as a zip or some other archive file), which means that we need to apply additional security measures to prevent code injection on the server.
If that whole process is done on the client's side, then I'm wondering what technologies can be used to achieve this? I guess it won't be possible to use the Python code from the commandline utility to achieve this, right?
It would be nice, if someone from the core team could explain how this website is intended to work and what you think about it in general?
Finally, I will answer the questions from the "Welcome Thread":
What computers and devices do I have available? I'm usually working from my notebook, a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, which I run on a Linux operating system. I also have a desktop PC running Linux, but I don't use it so often.
Since I'm actively developing Kodi addons for the official repositories (see here for an overview of my personal Kodi addons: https://github.com/goggle/goggle-kodi-addons), my interest lies in improving and simplifying the submission process for Kodi addon developers.
Currently, the process for submitting addons to the official repositories is time-consuming and can be very complicated for new addon developers: The addon developer needs to maintain a personal fork of the official "repo-plugins" git repository from Github with many different branches. The addon can then be included into this forked repository by git subtree merging as described in the Kodi wiki: https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Create_add...ee_Merging. Here the submitter needs to distinguish between a "First time setup" and "Updating an already existing addon to a new version". After the changes have been pushed onto the users Github branch, one needs to log in to Github, open a pull request and carefully choose the correct branches for both repositories. After completing the description template, the user can finally submit the pull request. Now, the addon-checker will scan the submitted code for incompatibilities and the code reviewer will give detailed advice to improve the code. After the user has committed and pushed all the requested changes, the reviewer asks to squash the commits into one commit with the correct commit message. Also this step can be quite cumbersome for a user with not that much git experience. Finally, if everything goes well, the changes will be included in the official Kodi plugin repository.
This whole process should be a lot easier! As suggested in the project idea "4.5.2 Addon submissions", I would like to create a tool that leads the addon submitter through this whole process in the user-friendliest way. In my opinion, a command-line tool (preferably written in Python) would be a great solution. Running the tool should be as simple as
Code:
kodi-addon-submitter /path/to/addonCode:
kodi-addon-submitter https://github.com/user/plugin.xyz.nameIf it is desired to have an additional graphical user interface to lead the addon developer through the submission process, I would suggest to build that using PyQt or PySide, and use the command-line utility as a library for it. Since Qt runs on every common developer platform (Mac, Windows, Linux), that would be a good choice in my opinion. Right now, I don't see too many advantages in having a GUI instead of a easy-to-use command-line tool, so I would like to ask what the possible mentors and other Kodi core developers think about this?
A web application to submit the addons would be really nice too, but here I have the most questions. First of all, where should the submission process happen: On the client's side or on the server?
If it runs on the server, I guess we could run the Python code from the command-line library. But this would mean that the server must be allowed to make a pull request in the author's name. Is that possible with Github's authentication API? Furthermore, the user needs to upload the whole addon (as a zip or some other archive file), which means that we need to apply additional security measures to prevent code injection on the server.
If that whole process is done on the client's side, then I'm wondering what technologies can be used to achieve this? I guess it won't be possible to use the Python code from the commandline utility to achieve this, right?
It would be nice, if someone from the core team could explain how this website is intended to work and what you think about it in general?
Finally, I will answer the questions from the "Welcome Thread":
What computers and devices do I have available? I'm usually working from my notebook, a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, which I run on a Linux operating system. I also have a desktop PC running Linux, but I don't use it so often.
- When did I first start programming? I learned programming about 10 years ago. I have some knowledge in C/C++, Java, Go and Python.
- Am I a Kodi user? When did I first start using it? Yes, I am a Kodi user, I'm running it on a Raspberry Pi 3 for my (not so smart) TV in the living room on a daily basis. I probably first started using it about 10 years ago, but only since about 2 years I use it on a regular basis.
- What do I primarily use Kodi for? Watching content made available by plugins that access popular public media libraries and YouTube.
- Have I contributed to other Open Source projects? Yes, I have. Mainly to youtube-dl, a tool to download videos from many different websites. Have a look at my contributions here: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/c...hor=goggle, https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pulls/goggle. As mentioned above, I have contributed to the Kodi addon repository many times with my own addons, here is an overview: https://github.com/goggle/goggle-kodi-addons
- What sorts of programming projects have I done in my own time? Many different things: I like to solve coding challenges, I have developed GUIs for medical imaging applications and many tools to simplify some processes.
- How much time do I have available, and how do I plan to use it? If I get chosen, I can arrange to have as much time as needed (certainly 35 hours per week during the coding period) available.
- Do I plan to have a job or study during summer in conjunction with Summer of Code? No, if I get chosen, I will concentrate on Summer of Code.