Running Toolchains on Debian?

[axton900]

After spending hours researching this, I was wondering if anyone knows how to install the c++ toolchains in Debian. The instructions that FIRST provide are not that welly written and I was wondering if anyone has the solution.
Thanks so much!!

[AustinSchuh]

Which Debian? Jessie? amd64?

I've probably got the packages somewhere I could get to you. We build exclusively on Jessie. That being said, we use Bazel (bazel.io) instead of any of the suggested build tools, so I can't be all that helpful in actually using it the way you are supposed to use it.

[fsilberberg]

You should be able to add the WPILib toolchain ppa to your apt lists and install with apt-get. The version of the ppa you want to add is dependent on which version of Debian you are running. Something like this: https://wiki.debian.org/CreatePackageFromPPA. Note that building from source will take a while, so you might try using the binary version first. I recall trusty working on Jessie the last time I tried.

[kmckay]

I'm having a similar problem, I'm trying to install to Raspbian. I want to try and use a pi as our pit coding station to save space and possibly reach a point where students could be provided the inexpensive pis to take home and work on.
Problem is, I'm also new to Linux, so everything needs to be explained to me like I'm a five year old. I got dependency issues when I tried to just apt get the toolchain and when I followed the wiki to install the source.
Any help available?

[fsilberberg]

The problem with using a pi is that the pi is an ARM chip, not a x64 chip. In order to get the toolchains working, you'd have to cross-compile it for arm.

[kmckay]

OK. Can you point me in the direction of how to do that?
Next thing I'm trying is downloading and building the source using the PPA link above. I apologize for my ignorance, too many years in aerospace using enterprise sanitized tools.

[fsilberberg]

I'm going to be honest: I don't think you're going to have a good time doing this. It'd be a much better idea to get something like a Kangaroo or some other x64 computer. However, if you're set on using the pi, you can find the toolchain source here https://bitbucket.org/byteit101/toolchain-builder/.

[Landonh12]

You could also get some cheap Thinkpads on eBay (x100e and X200 come to mind) that run Debian great and will be good enough for a coding station/driver station laptop.

[kmckay]

Stupid question: Does all of this go away if we were using Java? (We have been contemplating a change)

[Landonh12]

If you want to upload and compile code on Debian through the command line, you can create an Eclipse project and then edit code through your favorite text editor. When you want to deploy, go to the root directory of your code and run "ant". This will run the same thing eclipse does and it will upload your code.

[fsilberberg]

It would be easier to do this with Java, yes. There's no cross-compilation necessary, since there's already a jdk compiled for the arm platform, and you don't need to compile anything with a native toolchain.

[fsilberberg]

Originally Posted by Landonh12

If you want to upload and compile code on Debian through the command line, you can create an Eclipse project and then edit code through your favorite text editor. When you want to deploy, go to the root directory of your code and run "ant". This will run the same thing eclipse does and it will upload your code.

You'll still need the toolchains, though. We take advantage of the eclipse internal builder with c++, so the ant scripts are only responsible for sending your code to the rio.

[Landonh12]

Originally Posted by fsilberberg

You'll still need the toolchains, though. We take advantage of the eclipse internal builder with c++, so the ant scripts are only responsible for sending your code to the rio.

I was referencing his question about Java.