[packman] Bug report - Kodi crash probably caused by Python 2 C wrappers in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

[Steven Swart]

Good day, all!

I have tried reporting this issue in several places now. Firstly, on
the Kodi forums.

Original thread here:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=354879

Team Kodi got back to me, saying that because the issue was only
happening on OpenSUSE, and more specifically, on Tumbleweed, (not on
Leap), that I should report the issue to SUSE. They also said that
this is not a build officially supported by Team Kodi.

So, I reported the issue to SUSE, you can see the full bug report,
with all backtraces and relevant info here:

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1173291

(Just a word of warning – I am getting a timeout when trying to
connect to the above site at the time of this writing. I hope that
they will be back soon.)

SUSE eventually got back to me, saying that the problem occurs in the
ctypes Python binding package
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/ctypes.html), and that I should
report it to the Kodi developers, if it is a bug in Kodi, or to the
Python maintainers, if it is a bug in the Python bindings.

Python is not my strong suit, while I can do basic hacking of Python
scripts; it is not one of my core skills.

My feeling is that, because Tumbleweed is a rolling release, it tends
to use more recent system libraries than are used in Leap and most
other Linux distros. So, this bug is probably something that has been
exposed by a more recent Python package, and that is why the problem
doesn’t seem to occur anywhere else in Linux land, as far as I know.

I can confirm that I have done a “zypper dup” today, 18th of November
2020, and my installation is up-to-date, as of today. I did a quick
test earlier; the problem still exists.

Given that I am not familiar with either the Kodi codebase or the
Python codebase, I am posting this report here. If someone could
please investigate, tell me where the problem lies, and advise me
where to report it, either back to Team Kodi, or back to SUSE, or,
where to report it to the Python maintainers, I would be grateful. I
do not know exactly where the issue or the responsibility for fixing
the problem lies.

Because the problem, AFAIK, only occurs with the Packman package on
Tumbleweed, I thought my logical next step would be to report it here.

Kind regards,
Steven.