Bug Broken kodi-game-libretro package (Ubuntu 20.04)
#1
There is an issue with kodi libretro package, it seems to be broken.
So, (at least on Ubuntu 20.04) after having added the following ppa, and updated (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa -y && sudo apt update), if one tries to install all (or any, for that matter) kodi libretro packages (e.g., sudo apt install kodi-game-libretro-*), there is a dependency error:
xml:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kodi-game-libretro-atari800 : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-bsnes : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-gba : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-ngp : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-pce-fast : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-psx : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-beetle-wswan : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-bluemsx : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-bsnes-mercury-accuracy : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-bsnes-mercury-balanced : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-bsnes-mercury-performance : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-craft : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-crocods : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-desmume : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-dosbox : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fbalpha2012 : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fbalpha2012-cps1 : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fbalpha2012-cps2 : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fbalpha2012-cps3 : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fbalpha2012-neogeo : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-fceumm : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-gambatte : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-gme : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-lutro : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-pocketcdg : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-prboom : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-stella : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-tgbdual : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-vba-next : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-virtualjaguar : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
 kodi-game-libretro-xrick : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable

About a year ago this was working fine.

Am I missing something?
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#2
I raised this before, no one seems to care. I guess libretro gaming support in Kodi is dead. A bit like the whole project...
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#3
Just wanted to add a "me too" here.

Code:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kodi kodi-game-libretro-pocketcdg

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kodi-game-libretro-pocketcdg : Depends: kodi-game-libretro but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This is on a fresh installation of Linux Mint 20.3.
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#4
we depend on the libretro ppa for dependencies, but it's sadly in a pretty bad state. Short of building all libretto cores ourselves, there is nothing we can do
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#5
Is it possible for someone who has a working libretro to put it in a PPA for the rest of us? (With the understanding that it's not being built regularly.)

Or has it already suffered from bit rot?
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#6
From a quick look at the failed build logs, it looks like there is an unmet dependency on the rcheevos library. The libretro PPA does not provide this dependency because it appears the library is already included under the retroarch source tree so it never fails to find it itself. Seems the solution would be to package the rcheevos library in the kodi PPA to meet the dependency or mirror what retroarch themselves do and include it in the source tree for the kodi-libretro addon at the cost of having to update it with upstream as an when required. How is the rcheevos dependency being handled for other builds?

Edit:
It looks like there are depedencies included within the repo for game.libretro, but the CMake doesn't reference them and just fails if it can't find its dependencies rather than building them. I'm not familiar with how packages are built for the kodi repositories, but I can only guess that they either circumvent the repositories CMake config or build the depends folder first and then adds the relevant paths to the config so they can be found. The PPA build on the other hand doesn't do that so you end up with it not finding what it needs.
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#7
Tried this again and still can't get this to work.

Anyone get any libretro game to work on Linux?  Or am I missing something big?
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#8
I think this works now!  I just did the following, and it installed without errors:

Code:
 sudo apt install kodi-game-libretro-pocketcdg
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#9
thanks i spent days looking for answers and finally this worked
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#10
Libretro packages may be available, but they haven't been updated in a long time because our build system requires the cores to be downloaded in a separate step. The solution is to add an option to enable "internal builds", similar to how game.libretro does it:
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Broken kodi-game-libretro package (Ubuntu 20.04)0