Update to projectM v4.x

[garbear]

Description

This PR updates all dependencies, including a bump of projectM from v3 to v4.

All non-dependency changes are currently from #130. Special thanks to @kblaschke for the v4 work.

Motivation and context

We currently have no ProjectM add-on for anything but Windows: https://jenkins.kodi.tv/blue/organizations/jenkins/xbmc%2Fvisualization.projectm/detail/Piers/49/pipeline/162

Windows doesn't build here yet, but we can release this without Windows so that ProjectM won't be missing on any platforms anymore.

How has this been tested?

Builds and runs on my macbook M2:

Windows testing in progress.

[kodiai]

Kodiai Review Summary

What Changed

Updates ProjectM from v3 to v4 with new C API, updates dependencies (GLM, angle, dlfcn-win32, dirent), and migrates addon to use projectM 4.0 API. Reviewed: core logic, docs

Strengths

• ✅ Proper mutex protection added around all ProjectM API calls to prevent race conditions
• ✅ Resource cleanup improved with explicit null pointer management in destructor

Observations

Impact

[CRITICAL] src/Main.cpp (456): Missing break statement causes case 5 to fall through to case 6
Missing break; statement at line 456 in ChoosePresetPack() causes case 5 (presets_projectM) to fall through to case 6 (presets_stock), incorrectly overwriting m_presetDir when preset pack 5 is selected.

[MAJOR] src/Main.cpp (263): Logic error always returns same value
GetActivePreset() calls projectm_playlist_get_position(m_playlist) twice in the condition check and return statement. When the position is 0 (valid first item), the condition if (m_playlist && projectm_playlist_get_position(m_playlist)) evaluates to false, incorrectly returning 0 instead of 0.

Verdict

🔴 Address before merging -- 2 blocking issue(s) found

Review Details

• Files reviewed: 38
• Lines changed: +315 -1112
• Profile: minimal (auto, lines changed: 1427)
• Author: core (adapted tone)
• Findings: 1 critical, 1 major, 0 medium, 0 minor (includes 2 from summary observations)
• Review completed: 2026-02-28T05:22:29.145Z
• Keyword parsing: No keywords detected

[ksooo]

@garbear I played a bit with this and at least on android I was not able to activate other presets. Despite of what I selected the default preset - projectM - was used, even after restarting Kodi. Otherwise the add-on seems to work just fine.

[kblaschke]

projectM 4 no longer uses dirent on Windows, instead we've switched to std::filesystem, which is more convenient. So this dependency can probably be removed.from the plug-in.

[kblaschke]

The plug-in should probably save the last preset index in the settings as well here, so playback will continue at the same index on the next load.

[kblaschke]

The Windows build issues should all be sorted with the 4.2 release as we removed SOIL2 and also switched from GLEW to glad for OpenGL function resolving, including a new API that allows the outside app to provide the GL function pointers if needed. We verified it works with Angle, so it should make things easier for Kodi as well!

[garbear]

The Windows build issues should all be sorted with the 4.2 release

When is 4.2 due? Currently I'm based on master on top of 4.1.6 but it might have these changes?

As we removed SOIL2 and also switched from GLEW to glad for OpenGL function resolving

So I should drop soil and add glad as a dependency?

projectM 4 no longer uses dirent on Windows, instead we've switched to std::filesystem

I also dropped dirent from the dependencies.

The plug-in should probably save the last preset index in the settings as well here, so playback will continue at the same index on the next load.

I haven't touched the C++ work, it comes directly from #130. If any changes are suggested, I'd appreciate if they could be done by someone. My contribution is basically the dependencies, so maybe an actual C++ author can open a new PR with my dependency work.

[kblaschke]

I haven't touched the C++ work, it comes directly from #130. If any changes are suggested, I'd appreciate if they could be done by someone. My contribution is basically the dependencies, so maybe an actual C++ author can open a new PR with my dependency work.

When I'm back home in a week, I can have a look at it and add any necessary changes to the other PR (I've opened it, so that's easy). Or just pull in your changes to the other PR or rebase on this PR after it's been merged, whatever is easier!