[Techtalk] Getting a later revision package from Synaptic

Akkana Peck akkana at shallowsky.com
Sun Jun 14 00:20:45 UTC 2009


Michael Fisher writes:
> This is probably easy for most of you out there but I seem to having trouble
> with it. I am getting involved with the Arduino micro-controllers and there
> is a version of gcc especially for them. I am running the recently upgraded
> Ubuntu 8.04 and when I try to install the gcc-avr package it says the only
> version available is 4.2.2-1. I need a version 4.3.2 or higher. Is there a
> way to force Synaptic to give the highest version available?

Why do you need 4.3.2 or higher?  I've built a couple of small
Arduino projects on Ubuntu 8.04 with tools available there.
Packages I have installed: avr-libc, avrdude, binutils-avr, gcc-avr.
avr-gcc is version 4.2.2. It gives tons of warnings but I'm told
that's normal by the only other person I've found who actually
uses avr-gcc instead of the Java Arduino tools. avrdude gives
scary-looking warnings too, but apparently that's also normal.
I get the impression that most of the software effort goes into
the Java tools (but I find avr-gcc a lot easier to use).

Admittedly my Arduino is a year old (a Diecimila) -- do the
newer ones need a newer gcc?

If you really do need a newer package, sometimes you can find a
repository that has newer software for an older distro, and can
add it as an extra line in /etc/apt/sources.list. Such repositories
usually either have "ppa" or "backports" in the name somewhere.

You can also try directly downloading the packages intended for
a newer Ubuntu -- for example, go to
http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/gcc-avr
(I found that by googling for ubuntu jaunty gcc-avr)
Download the .deb and try installing it with dpkc -i filename.deb.
But you may need to download some other debs to meet its requirements.

	...Akkana


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