Howto: SVN installer on XBMC live to enable automatic skin and plugin upgrades/installs
**This is a legacy article which does not meet some of our quality standards. While it may contain useful information, is retained here for legacy reasons only.**
For ages I’ve wanted to know how to put the plugins back into xbmc. When you do a fixed disk install from the XBMC live iso, they’re just not included. Why? It’s probably that the XBMC team don’t consider the live disc to be important, yet it is the best out of the box media centre around simply because it’s light, has no extra applications you don’t need, uses it’s own window manager, free and works out of the box!
So here’s how I used SVN XBMC to do it.
ssh into your xbmc media centre
$ ssh <youripaddress>
Become root
su <password>
ensure unzip is installed
# apt-get install unzip
Become normal user
# exit
Enter plugins directory
cd /home/xbmc/.xbmc/plugins/programs
Download installer
$ wget http://xbmc-addons.googlecode.com/svn/packages/plugins/programs/SVN_Repo_Installer.zip
unzip SVN Installer
$ unzip SVN_Repo_installer.zip
Delete the original zip file
$ rm SVN_Repo_installer.zip
Configure XBMC
Go to settings, skin settings, (left hand menu), home window and turn on the show programs option in the main menu.
Go to main menu and choose Programs
There will be program plugins and under that your new installer.
You’re done! Using the installer is fairly self explanatory, check out the skins, you’ll be really impressed.
