We are excited to announce that the respository we’ve all loved for 2 year has a new generator in the backend!
Since October 1st 2014, the repository known as SuperRepo has been build by the 5th generation generator called “Square Eyes” . Since then Kodi evolved massively and SuperRepo wants to keep up with that pace of development. In order to be able to do that the repository generator has been rewritten from scratch; based on 2 years of experience. Today I announce SuperRepo Generator “Picture Perfect” V7 final!
Top 5 improvements in Picture Perfect
If I would write down every change, this article would be too long to read. Many changes were meant to make the repository more stable and maintenance easier. For you as a user the most important bits are…
Improved stability and compatibility
As always stability and compatibility have had the highest priority. The new generator has been tested for quite some while, closely monitoring it’s behavior. Issues with ‘dependencies not met’ and upgrading addons are fixed. It is now fully supporting every XBMC and Kodi version since XBMC Frodo including the upcoming Kodi Isengard.
No more legacy
When SuperRepo started in 2013, it was the first massive installer and it pushed many boundaries. In an attempt to enable users to only browse a subselection of all the addons, a filter was used to create subrepositories. Those filters proved to be sub optimal. For example: addons were categorized based on country instead of language. However, I had forgotten that many countries share the same language (for example Arabic). An issue that needed to be repaired. Therefor, new filters were created and old filters were removed in order to create a consistent set of subrepositories.
If you used a subrepository based on a country, this repository is now obsolete and not updated anymore. Please remove it and install a subrepository based on language. New languages subrepositories can be requested by sending an email to admin@su……….org.
Less connections, a faster Kodi
When you browse the addon list in Kodi you see some nice logo’s and background (called fanart). Until recently there was no way to tell Kodi there was no logo or fanart for a particular addon, which resulted in your Kodi trying to download many files that did not even exist. Team Kodi fixed it by adding new tags to the information file. However, many addon developers did not add the tag so Kodi does not know about the (non)existence and keeps trying. And there comes some SuperRepo smartness: SuperRepo does know if there is a logo and/or fanart and fixes the information file before it is send to you! This means your Kodi will only connect to get a logo or fanart when the file exists.
Cleaner addon list
Some developers use tricks (adding a whitespace for example) to get their addon to be listed first. This could lead to a situation in which addon developers add more tricks to stay on top, and you not being able to find them when you look for the letter T. SuperRepo added extra cleaning to prevent such abuse of functionality.
A longer retention time
In the past some developers have to bumped their addon versions very fast in order to ‘erase’ earlier versions from existence. In those cases, the intentions were all but good. This is now prevented by having a minimum retention time and a smarter algorithm to determine if a package is really obsolete.
Known issue
The website is still based on the old generator. Migration is being worked on, but until finished the created bundles can still cause “dependencies not met” when installing them. This does not hurt your installation of Kodi in any way so try it again once the new generator powers the website too.
Request for financial support
While SuperRepo saves you time and effort; maintaining the repository, the servers and the website takes 99% of my free time. Because I believe you should have one stable, central place to find the addons you like.
Please show your appreciation for the time I have invested and keep investing, by donating a few bucks. My girlfriend and son appreciate it too 😉
SuperRepo has a forum now!
A few days ago, a new forum was started for the “third party addons” community called AddonKoding. SuperRepo new has it’s own section. Go visit the SuperRepo section at Addons.Center and leave your feedback! Ps. the popular addon developer HIGHWAY99 can be found there too.
Cheers,
Bart Otten – founder and maintainer of SuperRepo.
Guide: How do I upgrade?
For the past two years I have done anything within my power to prevent manual upgrades in order to provide the best user experience. This time however, automatic upgrades would be too complex.
Link: How to upgrade to Picture Perfect?
Comments at our Addons.Center page.