Update Grab-bag
There is lots going on in XBMC-land, so now seems like a good time for an update on all fronts. I’d like to touch quickly on several areas, there are sure to be some follow-ups coming soon.
We’ve been busy
This was mentioned a few weeks ago on the forum but was never brought up here: In a recent presentation to the Linux Foundation, XBMC was listed in the top 50 live projects (gleaned from Ohloh’s statistics). It is truly an honor to be among the others in that list!
Releases
We have struggled in the past to put out timely releases, because it’s hard to get everyone to quit adding new features long enough to freeze for testing and go through the release motions. To counter that we have borrowed a page from the Linux kernel’s development flow, and added our own touches. We consider this an experiment and we’re not sure if this will be what we settle on going forward, but it’s certainly a start in the right direction. Here’s how it works:
For each major release, we will have monthly merge windows. For roughly a week we will furiously merge in the approved features that have been queued up in the form of pull requests at Github. That leaves the rest of the month for testing and bug-fixing. Then we’re back to a fun new merge window. After a few of these cycles, we will do a hard freeze and enter the Beta/RC stage, followed by release. The hope is that we can move away from a model of constant code-churn to one broken into chunks of stable/unstable periods.
So there it is in its theoretical glory. There are still lots of details to work out, but so far it has been working well. Having features queued up gives us a more clear way to discuss what is going in, and for users to know what to expect. For now, we are using issues at github to manage milestones as it provides a nice interface for discussion (and even a shiny green ‘merge’ button). It will take a few of these merge windows for us to get a feel for things, and from there we’ll begin charting out the Frodo release schedule.
Nightlies
As the April merge window is closed and things have settled down, nightly builds have resumed. It remains to be seen if it will make sense to host nightly builds during the chaotic merge windows.
A few things are up in the air for the Ubuntu PPA, since we have now been accepted into the official repositories. We want to be sure that nightly users have seamless transitions to official releases if they choose, so unstable PPA builds are still on hold. Also, due to some issues with iOS5, ios/atv2 nightly builds are on hold as well.
GSOC
We have 4 students participating in GSOC this year! Congratulations (and thanks) to Tobias Arrskog, Sascha Montellese, Andres Mejia, and Alasdair Campbell. We’ll certainly dedicate a post in the next few days to their projects, for now their proposals can be seen on the clunky GSOC Page.
Is the stable PPA going to get updated for Precise or are we going to be expected to grab it from the official repos?
Thanks for the update!
Andres Mejia’s project certainly seems an especially useful project – my brother was only mentioning something similar the other day.
On the very last day before the merge window, you should publish a milestone build, since this is theoretically the most stable moment of each cycle. There’s a whole segment of users out there who are keen on using the latest and greatest, but aren’t confident enough to upgrade to nightlies.
@Rob
Yep, that’s certainly been discussed. The question is whether we should give them mainstream (xbmc.org) attention or not.
By way of definitions, we’re currently calling each merge-window an alpha phase. So it’s possible that we’ll do alpha builds just before a new window opens, with the understanding that these builds are not yet feature-complete. Basically the same thing as the -rcX snapshots from the kernel but with a more fitting name.
Video quality is ok,but needs closed captioning option. Hope it comes out on next update.
Whooo. Thanks for the update. Heres to hoping the next version will support 10-Bit GPU decoding and the ability to raise the volume instead of just lowering it (Useful for those of us with no receivers). Thanks for all the hard work as always. Been using XBMC since the original X-Box. I will continue to use it till the end of time!
Excuse the ignorance but what are the .pdb files for?
Thanks.
There is nothing on the GSOC page… I’m seeing no Accepted Projects.
@theuni
Awesome! I’d give them special billing on the download page at the very least, similar to how you expose the nighties. And you can optionally point to them in a blog post when a major feature drops.
That said, avoid the term alpha because that sounds just as scary as nightly and implies that it’s (mostly) feature complete. Eclipse.org and jazz.net use the term “milestone”.
Funny how people take the time to write a comment rather than just Google for the answer – empower yourself man! Anyways, .pdb files are Program database files created by Visual Studio for debugging. You don’t need them for anything unless you’re a developer.
@Hitcher – they are the debug files – contain all the symbols and other things to allow debugging a compiled program. Basically by including the pdb file for that particular build we can analyze a crash dump file much better.
@Richard
I did a quick Google but that said it was for a Palm handheld computer.
Now its out. We ported XBMC to palm *running* ;)
Thanks for the update, I am now completely switched over to the new XBMC PVR EDEN, more stable, not falling as the DHARMA Ver.
@Adam Outler
From what I could search on (it really is a crappy site to search):
Andres Mejia – add a test suite for various components of XBMC.
Alasdair Campbell – extend the existing UPnP handling within XBMC
Tobias Arrskog – ???
Sascha Montellese – integrate the filtering functionality of Smart Playlists (a feature of XBMC) into the media listings available in XBMC (set of properties filters)
@TheMonkeyKing
I found him; the proposal is to create a “Clean scraping API” (See https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2012/topfs2_tobias_arrskog/23002)
Just wondering what that means for users like myself who only want to try out stable releases (had some bad experience with nightlies and don’t want to go there again). Will there be stable releases with new features between major releases with this new system?
Here is a proper link to the XBMC Foundation GSoC page with student projects
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2012/xbmc
Unfortunately there is very little details there on the accepted student projects
Thanks for the update. I believe this new release plan is something that could really work well.
@Robert
Agrees, closed captioning is desired by us Deafies. Subtitles are good, some sync issues maybe with some formats and plugin’s. But captioning is preferred for Deaf people over subtitles. see http://www.closedcaptioning.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning for more information regarding captioning and the subtypes.
Thank You.
I’m really liking the new release plan and a big congrats on the top 50.
@TheMonkeyKing
<a href="https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2012/topfs2_tobias_arrskog/23002"
Hoping that the link doesn’t end up in 404 land (you had an extra “)”). :)
Love your work guys! Much appreciated – my whole family is loving our XBMC experience! You deserve a top 50 spot.
@Hitcher
.pdb files are for debug under windows only (not sure for windows).
They contain all symboles you need to debug.
@Richard
Funny how some people can’t hide what a complete ass they can be.
Thanks so much for your hard work XBMC team! I’ve been following your progress for some time now, and you’ve yet to disappoint.