[LEDE-DEV] Kodi

[Mirko Vogt]

On 03/15/2017 11:57 AM, Daniel Engberg wrote:
> Hi,

Huhu,

> 
> While I applaud your achievement I'd don't see such projects viable in
> terms of maintainability and longevity.

Applauds from me as well! I started doing so with XBMC a couple of years
ago and eventually gave up..

> 
> Pulling in Kodi will result in lots of external packages and
> dependencies to make it usable in a reasonable way.

Sorry, but I totally disagree.
I always saw (and still see) OpenWrt/LEDE as a toolchain and Linux
embedded distribution - *not* just for routers.

Me and few others already started very early to get it running on rather
unusual devices (landline phones, mobile phones, digital picture frames,
even (mini) notebooks (OLPC, Qi NanoNote, etc.)).

Almost a decade ago by now we ported Xorg and all it's dependencies to
OpenWrt/LEDE. Later on GTK, enlightenment and its EFL stack, Qt and what
else. Although the xorg-feed is not in a good shape anymore (and I
rather discourage anybody from using Xorg if there's no real need for a
windowing system), lot's of stuff remained, is still maintained and used.
The new video feed is supposed to be kind of a reincarnation of the
outdated xorg feed.

I highly encourage approaches like those and don't see any need for
forcing OpenWrt/LEDE being only a router distribution.
This only counts of course, if one approach doesn't interfere with the
other. So let's come to your concrete issues:

> 
> There are several issues with this:
> 
> * In general binary size > performance and/or functionality pretty much
> always takes priority, this is a major issue when it comes to multimedia
> (ffmpeg and friends comes mind).

I fail to see in which way additional packages - in this case:
dependencies for Kodi - do add size/performance issues the existing
device configurations.

> * It's more or less duplicating work already done by projects like
> LibreELEC, OSMC etc.

Then all work for OpenWrt / LEDE is duplicated work already done by
Gentoo (emerge build instructions), Debian (deb rules-file),
OpenEmbedded, you name it...

> * You'll need to import a lot more of 3rd party libs and applications to
> make it a viable/reasonable user experience and there's a overall
> concern about build performance of the buildbots.

I heard that buildbot performance argument quite often. Back then, I
eventually gave up, excluded the xorg-feed from the default feeds.conf
and problem solved.
Funny enough however, the discussion comes up every now and then again.
Last time - without me re-initiating it nor taking sides - quite a few
people who're participating at OpenWrt/LEDE for a long time by now,
tried to encourage me to migrate the video feed into the packages feed.

Right now I'm fine with having the extra video feed and maybe will open
up the discussion about having it enabled by default some day. So, no
additional build time (for now).

> * Will anyone properly maintain all packages? We're already now
> struggling keeping the current repo somewhat up to date and
> maintainable, adding very niche packages certainly won't help.

This is indeed arguable, but come on, the situation got *a lot* better
over the past years and we can always kick out packages which are not
maintained anymore. No need to deny porting efforts because some day it
might not be maintained anymore...

> 
> Whether we like or not about 90% or so of all efforts goes into
> something network related, I don't think we in a foreseeable future want
> LEDE to turn into a swiss army knife and/or jack of all trades.

I agree on being skeptical about features which would interfere with
what OpenWrt/LEDE is currently mostly used for.
But discussed project ain't one of them.

So please let's not deny those effort, discourage projects like those
and the people behind - but rather support and encourage them in
up-valuing OpenWrt/LEDE as a whole.

I honestly don't understand the fear here, but maybe I'm missing or
misunderstanding some points(?).

If concerns however outweigh the benefit I see, I'm more than happy to
host Kodi and its dependencies in the video feed and risk it not being
enabled in feeds.conf.default anytime soon.

> 
> Best regards,

Likewise

> Daniel

mirko