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Raspian / armhf package repository plans?

asked 2015-01-21 16:03:13 -0500

Freyr gravatar image

updated 2015-01-21 16:04:09 -0500

Are there any plans for building and providing a standard repository for armhf packages compatible with the likes of Rasbian?

Raspberry Pi seem like a great gateway drug for getting into ROS given how cheap, relatively powerful and well supported platform it is. Seem like a very sensible/obvious first choice when upgrading a robot to include a computer capable of running a full blown OS. The rather convoluted, shaky and time consuming process of building the environment and trying to get different packages is pretty intimidating if your not already a ROS veteran and a competent linux buff. I can claim neither.

I have come across a willow garage effort by Paul Mathieu in mid 2013 for groovy (including buildfarm instructions) which looks great but I don't see any indication that it was ever taken further or updated since.

Having prowled through the ROS tutorials (via ROS in a VM) and being thoroughly impressed by it's capabilities I only imagine the satisfaction of being able to start operating ROS on a fresh $40 RPi with in minutes of powering it on for the first time.

I myself am one of those amateur robot builder trying to upgrade from a arduino based arbotix include a RPi and I know it has all the tools I need but getting them to work remains a pretty convoluted process still.

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Spend the extra $10-15 for a better board with an ARMv7 processor. You'll get something significantly more powerful and better supported by Ubuntu and ROS. I have no plans to support the Raspberry Pi.

ahendrix gravatar imageahendrix ( 2015-01-26 20:03:36 -0500 )edit

Raspberry Pi 2 is being announced these days with a quad 900Mhz ARMv7 and 1GB RAM so maybe I will have the entire cake and eat it in the end. I'll be looking for your packages when I get my hands on one :)

Freyr gravatar imageFreyr ( 2015-02-02 05:51:13 -0500 )edit

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answered 2015-01-26 18:06:58 -0500

Dirk Thomas gravatar image

The current build farm does not build ARM packages on a regular base.

@ahendrix built ARMhf packages some time ago and they are being imported into the official repositories in the next days (?). But they are already several months old.

The upcoming build farm will be able to build ARMhf at the same time as the other architectures. If you would like to try these packages (which are still in a temporary apt repository) you can get them from

Hopefully the new build farm can replace the current one (for Indigo and Jade) in the near future.

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Note that these packages (old and new) won't work on the Raspberry Pi; it's a ARMv6 instruction set, while all of the builds are done for the ARMv7 instruction set.

ahendrix gravatar imageahendrix ( 2015-01-26 20:02:30 -0500 )edit

Will they work on the new Raspberry Pi 2 B? I am playing around with one now but there was some problem following the Raspbian instructions. I suppose the Raspbian instructions when refrencing binary debs will give you the wrong kind (for ARMv6).

TommyP gravatar imageTommyP ( 2015-02-07 18:07:38 -0500 )edit

The UbuntuARM debs probably won't work on Raspbian. They might work if you install Ubuntu. See also:

ahendrix gravatar imageahendrix ( 2015-02-08 03:17:53 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2015-01-21 16:03:13 -0500

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Last updated: Jan 26 '15