Holiday Packages

It's time for holiday packages!  Not the kind you put under the tree, but the packages you install on your Linux OS to provide new programs and features.

Thanks to the incredibly awesome Robert Nelson, just about everything needed to install and run Machinekit is now available in the default BeagleBone Debian package repositories.  This includes a few things back-ported from Jessie to Wheezy, some things that need to be built directly from source, and even a 3.14 Xenomai real-time kernel!  The actual Machinekit packages (and the buildbot infrastructure that builds them) remain on the private repository generously provided by John Morris at DovetailAutomata.com.

MANY thanks to Robert for this great work, which frees up the Machinekit developers to keep improving things.

If you haven't worked with a package based Machinekit install yet, I suggest you try it out.  Using packages makes it much easier to stay current with updates and enhancements.  Instructions for installing Machinekit from packages can be found on the Machinekit website.  Packages are available for the BeagleBone (arm7), Raspberry Pi (arm6), and generic PCs (i686/amd64).  For real-time operation, you'll also need an appropriate real-time kernel (PREEMPT_RT, Xenomai, and RTAI are currently supported).