[Guardian Hope]

The Road to Danvers and Krypton

a little feedback from the community wouldn't hurt:

I don't mean to be rude, so please don't take this the wrong way. Consider this just constructive criticism.

After reading your post above regarding this skin and it's release, I'm sort of left scratching my head... And just plain confused.

In the single post above you mention: dormer, danvers, summer 2016, preview availability, general availability, seasonal release, anniversary edition... All this, tucked away in a sub section of a forum labelled as a "mod" for a skin that's development has ceased for months.

Perhaps a new forum section for this skin? It doesn't appear to be much of a "mod" but more of a skin of its own.

I mean, most skins just have a point release version, or a simple "Jarvis beta" or "krypton beta" which is pushed to kodi repo when stable. this makes sense and is pretty obvious and simple.

In regards to this skin, my feedback: keep it simple.

I don't mean to be discouraging in any way, it's great to have a lot of skins to choose from so
Keep skinning away!

Cheers,
Loggio.

Absolutely understand! Since the easier part is to address the forum section I will do that first. I actually didn't know the "original" Arctic Zephyr is no longer being developed and that is surprising news to me at least. Kodi has a strange policy regarding what and what doesn't get put into the repositories and thus get their own forum sections. Ideally, I believe this policy is intended to keep the forums "clean" but as you aptly noted, based on what you said this modification is tucked in a sub-forum for a skin no longer actively developed for and has by its own right become a skin of its own standing even if it is clearly Arctic Zephyr in origin.

A Team Kodi member would have to comment on that subject matter. It is virtually uncharted territory. The skin is however hosted in the Emby Repository - standing on its own.

I do apologize for the confusion regarding all the update lingo; it's just a pretty standard thing in an entirely different area which is being applied to this skin as well. Happy to explain it:

• Summer 2016 Update - The "seasonal update" that occurs to the skin, in this case the one to be released this Summer. An example of a previous one is the "Spring 2016 Update" which everyone is using and a future one would be the "Autumn 2016 Update" which will be released with Krypton;
  
• Dormer - The branch name for the Jarvis version of Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes (3.x.xx)
  
• Danvers - The branch name for the Krypton version of Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes (4.x.xx)
  [*]Preview Availability - Typically, AZ:FA is updated about once every three to four months (the change of the seasons basically). Preview Availability is like an Alpha and a Beta rolled into one. It's a version of the skin that doesn't abide by "seasonal updates" and will be consistently updated up to the release of the version of Kodi it's intended for. It's rough around the edges and meant for testing.
  
• General Availability - The "current release" version of this skin that is actively supported. It's obviously passed its Alpha and Beta stages and is now stable enough to run and be seasonally updated. The Danvers branch will transition to this upon Kodi 17's release. The Dormer branch is currently in this state.
  
• Anniversary Edition - This is the official name of the next version of Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes as it will be released around the time of the first anniversary of the AZ:FA project. It has the same meaning as "Danvers."
  

This is turning into a unique thread...

I gotta agree with the post above about all the naming things being thrown around. Seems like a confusing way to present updates, IMHO simple is 9 times out of 10 the way to go.

Why the need to change the folder name after altering the addon id to include danvers? That shouldn't mean you need the folder name to match the skin id. At least I cannot think of a reason one would need to do that.

On second thought, why even alter the id in the first place as now auto updates from a repo won't ever happen when anyone updates to a newer Kodi version.

I am not criticizing just curious as to why make that decision

When downloading from GitHub, you always had to change the name of the internal folder in the zip because GitHub appends additional information. This is a limitation of the Skin Helper Service. The Skin Helper Service expects the Addon ID to match the name of the internal folder so if the Addon ID is "skin.arctic.zephyr.fromashes" it can't have the folder within the zip named "skin.arctic.zephyr.fromashes-master." This only effects the GitHub Release Channel and always has been true. So this means that since the next version has "danvers" in it, the folder inside the zip file also needs to be named appropriately.

Now the thought to change the Addon ID for Krypton was a long and hard choice to make but it was done to prevent the mixing of the two versions. This skin also happens to be hosted in the Emby Repo and as such there is a "skin.arctic.zephyr.fromashes" and there can't be another one to use that Addon ID; otherwise Jarvis would get the same version and thus Jarvis users would not have a working skin. So, to rectify that a new Addon ID was needed and in this case it's "skin.arctic.zephyr.fromashes.danvers" which is sort of fitting given that Kodi 17 is named Krypton.

So really, it comes down to technological limitations of supporting two versions concurrently in the same repository.

Hope this helps