Compile and install Kodi on Debian/Ubuntu distributions

Table of Contents

• Readme me first
• Cloning this repository
• Clone and prepare Kodi source code
• Compile and installing Kodi for the first time
• Compiling the Kodi binary addons
• Update Kodi
• Notes

Readme me first

These scripts assume that:

• The build will happen in a aarch64 Ubuntu Bionic or Debian Buster based environment.

  • You can create a chroot to fullfil this need. See here for more info. You can also download a preconfigured VM with these chroots already created here.

• The /home/kodi is the base folder during the configuration and build of kodi-gbm

• The OS that the generated install will be used in Ubuntu 19.10 based. Ubuntu 20.04 may work as well.

• Kodi source code is located in /home/kodi/kodi-source/.

• Kodi temporary build directory is /home/kodi/kodi-build/. You can safely delete it once Kodi has been compiled and installed.

• Kodi will be installed in the directory /home/kodi/bin-kodi/.

• Kodi user data directory is ~/.kodi/. As an example for ArkOS the user data directory will be /home/ark/.kodi/.

Once compiled and installed, you can execute Kodi by doing:

$ /home/kodi/bin-kodi/lib/kodi/kodi-gbm

To compile Kodi for ArkOS. This will take a while.

$ ./ArkOS-Kodi-Build.sh

The generate executable and addons will be located in the /home/kodi/ForArkOS directory.

The first time you execute Kodi the userdata directory /home/ark/.kodi/ will be created.

Now that Kodi is installed you can safely delete the Kodi build directory to save disk space:

$ ./purge-build-directory.sh

Do not purge the build directory before compiling the binary addons.

the binary addons are automatically installed in /home/kodi/bin-kodi/ after compilation.

Update Kodi

Update Kodi source code:

$ cd /home/kodi-source/
$ git checkout master
$ git pull

If you wish to set a specific version:

$ git checkout 17.6-Krypton

Then configure, compile and install Kodi again:

$ cd /home/kodi/kodi-install/
$ ./configure-kodi.sh
$ ./build-kodi-gbm.sh
$ ./install-kodi.sh
$ ./build-binary-addons-arkos.sh

If you plan to update Kodi frequently then do not execute purge-build-directory.sh to save compilation time (only files changed will be recompiled).

Notes

• Compiling the binary addons with build-binary-addons-no-pvr.sh installs them in /home/kodi/bin-kodi/ even if Kodi has not been installed before.

• The addons game.controller.* are not binary addons. They can be downloaded with the Kodi addon manager.

• Kodi is built out-of-source but the binary addons are build inside the Kodi source.

• Executing build-binary-addons-no-pvr.sh or build-binary-addons-libretro-cores.sh updates the binary addons source code if it has been changed?

• After a fresh installation all the binary addons are disabled. They must be enabled in Settings -> Addons -> My addons.

• If a Libretro core is not installed the extensions it supports are not shown in the Games source filesystem browser. Libretro core addons must installed/enabled first.