XBMC August 2012 Cycle
As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.
With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the August Changelog.
Touchscreen Keyboard Optimization
With the push into tablets and the continued support of iOS devices, it’s becoming increasingly critical that XBMC provide a better user experience for touchscreen input. As such, the first feature of this month’s Cycle is a refactor of our GUI Keyboard to allow for native onscreen keyboards. This means the keyboard that you see while using other software on iOS will be the same keyboard you see while using XBMC.
Artist-based Smartplaylists
For those who are not aware, XBMC Smartplaylists are a sort of filter that should not be confused with something like an iTunes Auto Playlist, as they behave differently. An iTunes playlist is typically a list of songs meant to be played in order or randomly, one right after another. An XBMC Smartplaylist is merely a filtered list from which one can pick an individual song or video, and once the song or video has ended, the user will be returned to the list to select another item.
The vast majority of dev Montellese’s GSoC work this summer has been dedicated to speeding up and refining Smartplaylists so that searching and filtering your content is faster and easier than ever before, and all done in real time. This month, he added Artist-based Smartplaylists, so that users can sort and filter their music by topics such as artist, genre, moods, styles, born, bandformed, disbanded, died, biography, and instruments, with the potential of adding even greater filtering support in the future.
Conclusion
As always, this is merely a sample of the many changes this cycle. For a full list of all the August changes, feel free to take a look at our list of August milestones. Also, keep an eye out for both the September Cycle and regular stories on the blog, as we’ve quite a bit of upcoming news. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading.
- Windows and OSX (64bit OSX will be available in the morning US time)
- Apple TV and iOS installation instructions (also available in the morning US time).
- Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for Linux are not currently available at XBMC.org.
Finally, a note for those of you who are tracking and submitting bugs. You may notice that Github has an “Issues” section. The Team would very much appreciate it if you did not submit bug reports through that section, but rather continued to use the forums and Trac. At the moment, the Team is using Issues as a concise means of grouping and identifying particular bugs that they gather from the forum and Trac sources. Thanks for your help!
well let me say this. I didn’t mean that to sound hostile or mean even though upon reviewing how I phrased it it does. that said I do admit I haven’t looked for Linux 64 bit because I have never seen it mentioned till now and don’t use Linux much myself. So what from what I understand they have compiled and released a 64-bit version for Apple and Linux but haven’t yet for windows..how come (just curious)? also If it is so hard to get XBMC on to apple machines why do they still port it to Apple Machines first (i.e. I pad) ( also just curious) I don’t claim to be an expert or read everything I can about XBMC. I simply was wanting to know because after searching all I could and seeing so many people mention that XBMC was released for 64bit why I cant find the windows version anywhere. as for the comment about the love affair I do apologies because that did sound wrong even though I didn’t mean it that way. from what i read on the web they came out on apple TV first they came out on I-Pad first, they brought out the 64bit on apple and form what i saw never compiled one and offered it to users for windows. If it is so easy anyone can do it then why don’t they offer one like they do for OS X and Linux?
Because it’s a lot of work and no one has done that work for Windows yet. It’s not even something that provides a significant performance improvement right now, but is something that will likely be useful later on. Developers for various platforms get around to it when they can and if they want to. 64 bit support is also something very specific to the platform being compiled on; just because one OS has a 64 bit version doesn’t mean that it makes it possible for 64 bit versions to be made for other OSes.
XBMC developers work on what they want and when they want to. Why did XBMC get ported to iOS before Android? Because those who worked on it decided to work on iOS first. iOS and Mac OS X share a lot of things, and for that and various other reasons the iOS port was the logical first step for a stable ARM port, but more than anything it was just that those who were working on it wanted to work on an iOS port. There is no formal decisions or delegation for these things. There is no group-wide decision where we go “This OS or that OS is more important, so work on that first”. We’re all volunteers and we work on what we want and when we want to. It’s as simple as that.
Also, without that iOS port then we wouldn’t be even close to having something working on Android.
This happens all the time in XBMC, where in the development stages one OS will gain a feature before it reaches the others. When it comes to stable releases, we try as best we can to keep the OSes on the same feature set, but things have to -start- somewhere.
Well that as very informative. Thank you NedScott. I assume from how you worded things that you are one of the XBMC devs.
From how things seemed to me from reading articles and forum posts on this site I believed that the development process and how things were done was more planned out and organized. From what you depict it seems chaotic. I do love the program and have it on several systems in my home. I respect all the people that work on the core program as well as all those that create plugins and various other implements for the program. I hope someday that I will be able to be a developer and help create stuff for this great program.
Devs….KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK.
@MONKEY!
I’m a member of Team XBMC, but I don’t actually code. While it does sound chaotic, all members of Team XBMC agree to the XBMC manifesto ( http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMC_manifesto ) and there is a passion to do things and do them -well-.