Kodi Ubuntu Team Kodi PPA no longer maintained

Jonas Lang

For anyone who has Kodi installed In Ubuntu and was wondering why they were no longer receiving updates, the Kodi project announced recently that the Team Kodi PPA is no longer being maintained. You’ll either have to compile Kodi yourself or install it from Flatpak. Further details here https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Install_Kodi_for_Linux?https=1

Ron L

For Debian Kodi 21 appears to be available in deb-multimedia.org for bookworm-backports. I've never tried to compile Kodi but it appears to be a task and a half. I'm also not keen on Flatpak. I've been running Linux Mint, I think the next upgrade will be a move to LMDE.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Ron L I've never tried to compile Kodi but it appears to be a task and a half.

If you know your way around the Linux command line, it's not all that difficult. Just a lot of things to do in the correct sequence. There are step-by-step instructions here:

xbmc/xbmcblob/master/docs/README.Linux.md

The "required packages" section can take some work to sort through and could be better documented. However, once that is done the process is fairly straight forward.

Jonas Lang

Ron L not really a longer term solution. I’m surprised to see there was only one individual left of the Kodi PPA team. Unfortunately you now see the danger of leaving a project in one pair of hands.

The compiling is not so difficult if you’ve everything you need gathered together in one place. Unfortunately Wikis are not always kept up to date which doesn’t help either.

I’ll attempt to provide a list of simple copy/paste instructions for my own platform for compiling Kodi as I’ve done with TVH previously. I find if users see too much tech speak they panic and move on.

Jonas Lang

DeltaMikeCharlie it might look straightforward to you as laid out in your link but believe me it’s not for your typical Kodi user trying to compile and install In Ubuntu. This may be one of those situations crying out for auto build scripts.

What would be nice to see is someone like yourself with the knowledge and energy to step in and take over the Team Kodi PPA maintenance. So far it’s seems nobody has volunteered yet.

Ron L

Alright, compiling Kodi was relatively straight forward and generally simple as long as you are compiling on the machine you want to install to using their instructions for /usr/local. Instructions for building deb packages are not given and those details were challenging to glean. If it helps anyone here is a rough account of what I ended up doing to build deb packages.

I followed the wiki instructions for Ubuntu to get the dependencies installed. Use the install dependencies manually option and copy the sudo apt install line. My system is Mint 21 based on Jammy. All the dependencies came in fine. I skipped Wayland and GBM. Installed the optional doxygen libcap-dev libsndio-dev but not libmariadbd-dev. Now if you move to the general Linux build instructions and follow section 4 you should get a Kodi install into /usr/local. However I wanted deb packages because I don't want to install a complete build system on every machine. So this is the cmake line I used ...

cmake ../kodi -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCORE_PLATFORM_NAME=x11 -DAPP_RENDER_SYSTEM=gl -DCPACK_GENERATOR=DEB

Now build as normal as per section 4.2

Next create the files changelog.Debian.gz and copyright in kodi-build/packages/deb and it appears they can be empty files.

Now run ...

cpack

In short order you will find debs in kodi-build/packages

Thats it for Kodi. Binary addons are a bit more tricky for deb packages but straight forward instructions are given for installing to /usr/local on the same machine that you compile on. Here is how I ended up finally making a deb package for these.

First, install the kodi-addon dev deb package from the ones you just finished building. Now there seems to be no way to build binary addons without cmake actually installing them as part of the process. So if you have existing addons installed back them up first. The only way to build dep packages for addons appears to be using the out of tree method. To get the source for the addon I first used the in tree build. So roughly this...

cd into kodi-build
sudo make -j 4 -C ../kodi/tools/depends/target/binary-addons PREFIX=/usr ADDONS="pvr.hts"

At this point pvr.hts is installed on your local machine. To make a deb package I then did this...
I made a directory in the kodi source (not kodi-build) directory called DEBS. I dug into kodi/tools/depends/target/binary-addons/native/build/download and found the source code directory for pvr.hts and then copied that directory into kodi/DEBS. Now cd into the pvr.hts source directory inside kodi/DEBS and run cmake ...

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr

Now cd into the debian directory and edit the changelog file to the correct version. Line number 1 should look some thing like this...

kodi-pvr-hts (6:21.2.3-git6c5564f90~jammy) jammy; urgency=low

save changelog and cd ..
To build the deb....

sudo dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

The package is found in kodi/DEBS

So I now have debs for Jammy to install on all my machines. Initial tests would seem it all works.

Final comments:

It would have been faster and easier to install a new debian bookworm system with kodi backports from DMO if Kodi is all that runs on the machine. I'm not sure if there is any good reason to stick with an Ubuntu based system any more. The Kodi ppa was one of the things keeping me there, but with Kodi now in debian backports and the ppa gone that certainly changes things. Running Bookworm also give access to MX repos which have some good things. I don't expect the Kodi PPA will ever be resurrected.

If anyone knows of an easier way to build debs for binary addons I'd love to learn of it.

Jonas Lang

Ron L you never mentioned what hardware you were compiling on.

An interesting write up but you’ve probably scared off most of the wannabes curious about building Kodi themselves. They literally demand simple copy/paste instructions or autobuild scripts that don’t include having to research when things go wrong.

As I mentioned above I’m surprised the Team Kodi PPA (or 1 man team in this instance) was neglected to such a state that the it was reduced to a 1 man operation. Personally I don’t like the look of the Flathub option, possibly installing a load of unwanted dependencies so I reckon self build is the only real option available now.

Ron L

Well, speaking as one of the wannabes who was curious about building Kodi for themselves I find your remarks puzzling.

For a straight forward compile without needing to build deb packages the instructions I found on the kodi wiki are literally simple copy/paste instructions. There are no difficulties installing dependencies on the latest LTS releases.

I don't care for Flatpak as you end up having to reinstall half the operating system for many applications.

The way Ubuntu seems to be moving I would not be surprised to see it stop supporting PPAs at some point so it is not entirely surprising to see Kodi move away from the PPA. Debian doesn't support PPA but does have the latest Kodi in Backports. So, for anyone wanting a painless Kodi move to Debian or MX or LMDE. Ubuntu is moving in a different direction so we'll just have to adapt.

Jonas Lang

Ron L there’s no puzzle really. Your standard user does not want the build/compile experience if they can possibly avoid it. That goes for Kodi and TVH. You only need to look at the different forums and the problems users encounter to see that. A simply added PPA and sudo apt install is about all they want to negotiate.

I have no doubt that the PPA concept will disappear in time but as it’s all containers, dockers, flatpaks and VMs now it probably won’t even be noticed.

Maybe someone might follow your instructions and see how successful they are at building Kodi to completion.

I will agree that Ubuntu, after 20+ years of experience for me is no longer the OS it once was. This will probably be my last Ubuntu LTS
I’ve no real interest in SBCs like Raspberry Pis etc. Great for tinkering and projects but that’s about it. Still looking around at Ubuntu alternatives though.

Ron L

Compiling from source is not necessary and not the only alternative to PPA. The PPA is gone. Time to move on. Ubuntu's stupidity is already causing problems. Someone asked me to join a Slack group yesterday. I went to the Slack site to download the file and guess what I found. A write up about how you can no longer double click on a deb to install it in Ubuntu and there is no longer a deb download option. You can download rpm otherwise have to install snap or flatpak. I ended up downloading an rpm, extracting it and installing the files manually.