Re: [LUG] Any Debian package experts?

[Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2012, Philip Hudson wrote:

> On 16 Jun 2012 12:13, "Neil Williams" <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 Jun 2012 11:44:41 +0100 (BST)
> > Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > Ideally, I need my package to replace an existing package if it's
> already
> > > installed, or to stop a future update replacing my package with the
> older
> > > version off Debian. (Let's not wory about security concerns for now -
> > > unlikely to be any, however)
> > >
> > > So what do I do? Increment the version number? Or is there some better
> way
> > > of doing it?
> >
> > Use an epoch. That way, your version will always be newer, it's easy
> > to keep track of the underlying Debian version in use and it's is
> > trivial to remove if the changes are merged. (You just need to remove
> > the old epoch version from your local repository and specify the Debian
> > version explicitly and apt will 'downgrade'.)
> >
> > 1.2.5-2 becomes 1:1.2.5-2 and when 1.2.6-1 turns up, 1:1.2.5-2 is still
> > newer.
> >
> > > And it's rather critical that I maintain the ability to do this as
> serial
> > > is not a viable option for this project, however it might well be used
> by
> > > 100's or even 1000's of people, so needs to be as easy to install as
> > > possible - wget the new version off my site, and dpkg -i is acceptable,
> > > but a future apt-get update/upgrade overwriting it isn't...
> >
> > Contact the Debian maintainer and discuss your requirements and whether
> > the package can be adapted to provide both implementations.
>
> Interested to know if this is what you went with in the end.

I went with applying an epoch for now. Seems to work and it means I can 
then install my avrdude on-top of any avrdude installed from the debian or 
raspbian respositories.

Ultimately when I get time I am going to integrate the patches I have into 
the trunk version of avrdude, but I'm a bit short of time righ now..

So essentially, I can now program an ATmega chip directly from the 
Raspberry Pi using 4 GPIO pins into the ATmega's ISP port without the need 
fo any serial programming or a bootloader. Doing it without a bootloader 
for this project is important as the ATmega runs at 12MHz and the standard 
bootlaoders out there assume 16MHz, so the baud rate calculations are 
wrong.

Will be publishing more about it in a few days time though.

Gordon

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