It's never been fun to upgrade Kodi (something inevitably breaks), but this is by far the worst upgrade of all. And now to find out that the automatically updated version that showed up on my Android TV is unmaintained..?! That takes the cake.
Even though Python 2 was set to EOL with 6 years warning (12 if you count the original timeline), Kodi didn't announce a change until last summer, I believe. So of course the vast majority of completely useful, basic utility plugins weren't updated, there was no enforced transitional upgrade path, and now we're stuck with an unmaintained Android version that contains this massive codebase change and 80% broken plugins.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for all the work the Kodi devs do. It's an immensely helpful program and by far the most used in my house. But this whole thing reeks of bad decisions.
There are no doubt going to be a significant number of issues found once plugins are upgraded (how can you tell the new system is stable enough for release when there are so exceedingly few plugins that work anymore?), and Android users are indefinitely in the dark as issues arise.
This version didn't have to be pushed out to Google Play, and knowing there was no maintainer makes such a choice hugely irresponsible. "We had to upgrade from Python 2.6 in case there are CVEs in the now defunct version!" makes sense. But now we have an unmaintained version in Android that broke everything, so if there are CVEs... guess who's not getting them? (Granted, it's sandboxed, so I'm not sure the concern makes a lot of sense on Android, but still.)
The Python 2/3 netsplit has been such a thorn for so long, so I can't entirely blame the Kodi devs. And it's not like a Kodi 18/19 netsplit would be a "good" idea. But this automatic, breaking change with no warning and no maintainer is seriously bad form.
"We're lucky we got the final Android 19 Matrix build out at all," is definitely not how I see it. "Lucky" would be Android users missing this very broken upgrade until they got all their ducks in a row and maybe more plugins are updated.
(And the whole, "well fix it/maintain it yourself," is a pretty poor response to bad project management in a project of this size, in case anyone is so inclined to suggest that. I maintain enough other OSS right now, thank you.)
walks off stage