Create repositories for our plugins

[dagwieers]

We have been contemplating to have one or more repositories to distribute our plugins faster.

• Official repository (for end-users)
  • All released stable versions of the VRT NU and VRT Radio plugin
  • This would be automatically updated as soon as we release a new version
  • We could look into having a 2 or 4 hour update interval
  • Fix issues before people notice anything
• Development repository (for collaborators)
  • The latest development version at this time (master branch)
  • A plugin per open PR and/or feature branches from developers
  • This would not automatically update (version would not be higher than latest release)
  • Users could select a version from one of the open PR branches to test out if it fixes their problem

Our current release process has a few issues:

• When we push to the official repository, we have no control over when it gets approved (might be hours, or days)
• When the new release becomes available it may take up to 24 hours before a Kodi installation updates the package
• We have had cases where we fixed a known issues within the hour, but it took more than 48 hours before all end-users had the fix

That said, our code today is a lot more resilient, we can test if things still work automatically, and we have fallback logic to not only depend on web scraping. So we are better prepared for issues than we were ever before.

[dagwieers]

Also see: https://github.com/ping/instant-kodi-repo

[dagwieers]

I was also looking into adding GitHub releases as a source in Kodi's file manager. However I couldn't find a working interface (RSS, DAV or HTTP). A wrapper for this could be nice (and easier than generating repositories on the fly).

[dagwieers]

I still think this would be nice to have, also for other plugins, but now that the VRT NU plugin is pretty stable, there is no longer a real need to ship something fast.