Running my own package for kodi-x11, built via makepkg, appears to not have this issue. That version however is at 18.7.1-5, and not 18.9-3 which is in the main Parabola repos.

As I write in the comment above, the issue with repositories does not occur with 18.7; I can install addons successfully using that version, so there has to be an addons.xml.gz for Leia.

To me it appears that either there is something amiss with how the 18.9 version is built, or some kind of regression has been introduced between 18.7 and 18.9.

so there has to be an addons.xml.gz for Leia.>

yes, i could have explained it better - that is just a copy the
previous 'krypton' repos, renamed as 'liea' - i did not expect
it to work; but it was an experiment, worth trying - still, i
would not expect it to work perfectly, if it works at all

When did you do the copy of the Krypton repos to Leia (note 'Leia', not 'liea' ;) )? I did this test right after opening the bug report, and the Kodi installation of plugins worked fine on 18.7 (but not 18.9). This was done practically at the same time.

that was about 2 months ago; when i explained the situation on
#2503 - #2503 is the bug report reference for the blacklist -
if there is anything more to add or discuss regarding kodi's
plugins, we should use #2503 instead, for future reference

I see, so the issue is that all plugins are blacklisted until the list is combed through. 8) I'll follow up in that bug report; as the problem here is that a simple default skin (Confluence) won't install on 18.9, whereas it works fine on 18.7.

This is probably due to 18.7 having been manually built with makepkg as noted above.