Kodi 19 “Matrix” uses the Python 3 interpreter

Kodi “Leia” 18.5 was officially released recently, and at the same time, the team made major changes to its next major release, Kodi 19 Matrix.

Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC/Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

RWDS EU [GPL], via Wikimedia Commons

It is reported that Python 2 will be dead on January 1, 2020. To this end, the Kodi Foundation has taken steps to switch to the Python 3 interpreter for all Python-based add-ons. Currently, the Kodi 19 “Matrix” nightly build is running all Python-based add-ons using the Python 3 interpreter.

The Kodi team explained:

“This migration is very much a breaking change for us, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get things fully functional again. This also needs to be done quickly, as we need to be complete before the end of life of Python 2 happens.”

The biggest problem is that conversion means that a lot of plugins will no longer work, but that’s not all. The team said: “There are also issues that need core developer knowledge to fix. Since moving to Python 3 there are some difficulties on all Windows platforms in particular. The version of Kodi for UWP (Xbox) does not compile at all, and needs someone to champion it. There are also issues with certain libraries e.g. Pillow, PyCryptodome, cTypes etc., being missing or incompatible versions, so those add-ons that depend on them don’t run and can’t be tested on Windows.”