cannot run recent kodi [was: substitute server not used]

[Marco van Hulten]

Hello,

Building the package 'kodi' appears hard, as suggested by the failed
builds at
<https://ci.guix.gnu.org/search?query=kodi-19.5+system%3Ax86_64-linux>.
Building also failed on my machine, probably because it has too little
RAM.  Therefore, I decided to skip kodi in upgrading my system.

On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 20:11:11 +0100 Marco van Hulten wrote:
> After I had done a 'guix package -u . --do-not-upgrade=kodi', I got:
> 
> 
> [kodi@watson ~]$ cat kodi.log.txt 
> libEGL warning: MESA-LOADER: failed to open i915: 
> /gnu/store/zisvdry6856i6z4iai62ff6l3anbdld8-mesa-23.0.3/lib/dri/i915_dri.so: 
> cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (search paths 
> /gnu/store/zisvdry6856i6z4iai62ff6l3anbdld8-mesa-23.0.3/lib/dri, suffix _dri)
> 
> libva info: VA-API version 1.18.0
> libva info: Trying to open 
> /gnu/store/zisvdry6856i6z4iai62ff6l3anbdld8-mesa-23.0.3/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
> libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
> libGL error: MESA-LOADER: failed to open i915: 
> /gnu/store/zisvdry6856i6z4iai62ff6l3anbdld8-mesa-23.0.3/lib/dri/i915_dri.so: 
> cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (search paths 
> /gnu/store/zisvdry6856i6z4iai62ff6l3anbdld8-mesa-23.0.3/lib/dri, suffix _dri)
> libGL error: failed to load driver: i915
> [...]

kodi wants i915_dri.so from mesa@23.0.3, whereas this does not contain
lib/dri/i915_dri.so.

My problems started after a thorough gc, though I kept a Guix profile
from July 2023.  I can run kodi from that profile, but that is not a
good solution.

This file is available on my system only for mesa@20.0.8 and
mesa@20.2.4.

I told kodi to use the the driver by exporting

    export 
MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=../../../m59c9hj9d4n65maimbpmx2xq56d2mvqs-mesa-20.2.4/lib/dri/i915

This ended badly:

```
$ kodi
libEGL fatal: did not find extension DRI_Mesa version 1

/home/kodi/.guix-profile/bin/kodi: line 186:  7867 Segmentation fault      
${KODI_BINARY} $SAVED_ARGS
```

That desperate attempt is a horrible hack anyway.  I wonder

1. if a more recent build of kodi@19.5 would actually solve something,
   as it has mesa-23.3.2 as a dependency, which – just like mesa-23.0.3
   – doesn't include the i915 driver either (I checked by installing)
2. whether kodi worked before because it depended on a mesa version
   that did include lib/dri/i915_dri.so

ad. 2)  I now see that in my July 2023 profile the same error appears
(no i915_dri.so available), but it just isn't fatal.  Some videos play
very slowly.  Could that be related to the problem it cannot load this
driver?  The system is not very new (Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500
@3.16GHz with 2 GiB RAM).

  Marco