Joystick support for Kodi

This add-on provides joystick drivers and button mapping services for Kodi. It uses the Peripheral API added to Kodi as part of PR 8807.

Building

Building this add-on requires Kodi's internal CMake-based build system for binary add-ons. If you are cross-compiling or just packaging the add-on, it is recommended that you use the Makefile provided with Kodi.

The Makefile will download, build and install the add-on and its dependencies. There is no need to manually clone the add-on if Kodi's source is available.

The version fetched by Kodi's build system is defined by a text file included with Kodi at project/cmake/addons/addons/peripheral.joystick or fetched from the binary add-ons repo specified in cmake/addons/bootstrap/repositories/binary-addons.txt.

Building on Linux

First, make sure Kodi's add-on build system is installed somewhere. You can perform a system install (to /usr/local) or a local install (I prefer $HOME/kodi). Specify this when you build Kodi:

./bootstrap
./configure --prefix=$HOME/kodi
make
make install

Now, run the Makefile with the path to the build system:

cd tools/depends/target/binary-addons
make PREFIX=$HOME/kodi ADDONS="peripheral.joystick"

You can specify multiple add-ons, and wildcards are accepted too. For example, ADDONS="pvr.*" will build all pvr add-ons.

On Linux this performs a cross-compile install, so to package the add-on you'll need to copy the library and add-on files manually:

cd $HOME/workspace/kodi/addons
mkdir -p peripheral.joystick
cp -r $HOME/kodi/share/kodi/addons/peripheral.joystick/ .
cp -r $HOME/kodi/lib/kodi/addons/peripheral.joystick/ .

To rebuild the add-on or compile a different one, clean the build directory:

make clean

Building on OSX

Building on OSX is similar to Linux, but all the paths are determined for you. This command will download, build and install the add-on to the addons/ directory in your Kodi repo:

cd tools/depends/target/binary-addons
make ADDONS="peripheral.joystick"

Building on Windows

First, download and install CMake.

To compile on windows, open a command prompt at tools\buildsteps\win32 and run the script:

make-addons.bat install peripheral.joystick

Developing

When developing, compiling from a git repo is more convenient than repeatedly pushing changes to a remote one for Kodi's Makefile.

Developing on Linux

The add-on requires several dependencies to build properly. Like Kodi's build system, you can perform a system install or a local one (demonstrated here).

First, clone p8-platform and build per standard CMake:

git clone https://github.com/Pulse-Eight/platform.git
cd platform
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/kodi \
      ..
make
make install

The kodi-platform library was split from p8-platform. Do the same as above for this library:

git clone https://github.com/xbmc/kodi-platform.git
cd kodi-platform
...

With these dependencies in place, the add-on can be built:

git clone https://github.com/xbmc/peripheral.joystick.git
cd peripheral.joystick
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
      -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$HOME/kodi \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/workspace/kodi/addons \
      -DPACKAGE_ZIP=1 \
      ..
make
make install

where $HOME/workspace/kodi symlinks to the directory you cloned Kodi into.

Developing on Windows

This instructions here came from this helpful forum post.

First, open tools\windows\prepare-binary-addons-dev.bat and change -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ^ to -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^.

Open a command prompt at tools\windows and run the script:

prepare-binary-addons-dev.bat peripheral.joystick

Open cmake\addons\build\kodi-addons.sln and build the solution. This downloads the add-on from the version specified in its text file (see above) and creates a Visual Studio project for it. If the build fails, try running it twice.

This should package and copy the add-on to the addons/ directory. If not, you can try opening the solution cmake\addons\build\<addon-id>-prefix\src\<addon-id>-build\<addon-id>.sln and building the INSTALL project or, worse case, copy by hand.