In the last blog post we already told you we are working hard towards a Beta release. There are still some things that need to be improved before we are confident on releasing a Beta. We will of course keep you posted when that time comes. Work continues by the developers to iron out the know remaining issues as much as possible. Thanks to the users who install our latest development builds, the remaining problems become known and we try to address these. Do note we may not be able to address all issues reported, as time and available developers are limited. We all try our best but we hope all of you will understand this and we need to accept that some issues will remain.

If you are a developer and you are confident enough to dive into our source code and fix it, we would appreciate it very much if you would create a so called pull-request on our github page for code review so it might be included.

Call to Gotham alpha users

As it stands now it’s highly unlikely there will be another monthly release before Beta release as there isn’t a merge window any more like we had in the previous months. The monthly builds were done at the end of the month to mark the most stable Gotham version. However now we only do bug fixing, each build we create daily should become better and better. This also means you can download and install the most recent nightly build quite safely to have the most up to date version running. Because of this we would like to ask if possible to upgrade to the last available “nightly build” (the links can be found at the end). As I just mentioned these builds should be considered more stable than any previous monthly Gotham release. There should be no reason to keep using any older monthly build. This would also help to identify any remaining issues left and helps us make the upcoming Gotham release a great one. Here’s the quite technical change log since last monthly release.

Additional note:

Especially for Android users there is a great benefit of installing the Gotham version over Frodo as it contains a vast amount of improvements which were to intrusive to be included in the Frodo 12.3 release. Also Gotham has an Android release for x86 hardware architecture which some manufacturers start using. Before downloading see if your device uses ARM or x86 hardware.

Frodo users

As we have mentioned in the Frodo 12.3 release blog it was the last release in that line. This also means there will be no more bug fixing done for Frodo. We know there are some issues left for that release but we need to move onwards. So if you are experiencing problems we would like to ask if possible to try out a Gotham nightly build to see if the issue persists and we may be able to fix it.

Add-ons

As already mentioned in previous blog posts like “Note to Add-on developers” and “Feature freeze” when installing a Gotham build you might face the fact that certain add-ons will report their selves no longer compatible. It takes some time for add-on developers to adjust and update their add-ons. Most of the add-ons found in the XBMC.org repository have been updated. If you have acquired additional add-ons through a third-party repository or website please contact those websites, forums or developer(s) where you downloaded them from. As almost any add-ons (except a few) are created by third-party developers we are not responsible for their maintenance or if you experiences problems with them. So again it is best to try and contact the developer and help him track down why it fails so he can try fixing it. Only for add-ons that are located in our XBMC.org repository you can browse the add-on website and see if there is already a quick link to the dedicated forum thread. If not you can find most of them here: Add-ons Help and Support. Be sure to also read the additional Forum rules before posting.

Empty repository:

If the repository list is empty or you are suspect you don’t receive any add-on updates you can try fixing it with Force refresh. Bring up the context menu when the repository is highlighted and select Force refresh. This will re-download the list from the server and hopefully the add-ons will show. This should work for the default XBMC.org repositories or any 3rd party repository installed. Updating will take some time so be patient. If after some time you still have add-ons listed you may need to check you network connection.

Wiki link: Empty repository list

List of Gotham blogs

For people who want to read up the developments and various improvements done since Frodo here’s a quick reference list in reverse order:

XBMC 13 Gotham – November and December

XBMC 13 – Gotham: Note to Add-on developers

Making Subtitle Search Better

XBMC 13 Gotham – September and October

Gotham 13.0 Feature freeze

XBMC DevCon 2013 LiveBlog

XBMC 13 Gotham – August

XBMC 13 Gotham – June and July

XBMC 13 Gotham – April and May

XBMC 13 Gotham – March

XBMC 13 Gotham – February



Conclusion

Should want to download and install XBMC, please visit our download page.

* Official XBMC downloads

How to Contribute

If you use these builds, we encourage you to submit bugs in Trac (following this guide: How to submit a bug report), provide support in our Forums where you can, or donate to the Foundation if you like. For a current FAQ on XBMC 13, visit our Gotham FAQ.