Packages for machinelit-cnc?

[Martin Berriman]

Hi all, I need some advice.

I am running a really old version of MachineKit (ver 0.1) on a BeagleBoneBlack controlling my Denford Triac.

It has worked really well for years however it feels like it's time to upgrade to a newer version (I originally started with EMC2 on a PC).

I have spent some time looking at the Machinekit github repo and I now understand that machinekit has been split in to HAL and CNC.

That's fine however when I follow the links to those two repos, I can only find packages on the HAL repo (for ubuntu and debian).

There do not seem to be any packages on the CNC repo - is this deliberate? - do I need to build from source?

[sliptonic]

Hi Martin,

I've been ranting here about the sorry state of the project and the difficulty finding packages/information that is current.  I also posted to one of the matrix rooms (gitter) and got a helpful response from cerna pointing me to a new initiative here: https://github.com/machinekit/EMCApplication

This looks to be getting some attention from the development side.  So far I'm trapped in dependency hell so I can't say whether it actually works.  Everything appears to be debian specific but LMDE lacks at least one critical package python3-avahi so it may not be debian enough.  

[Martin Berriman]

Thanks Brad, I just spotted the messages on Gitter too :-)

I'm confused as to why EMCApplication is the preferred front end rather than Machinekit-CNC but hey ho.

I'm planning to start with a fresh Debian install (probably Buster) and it then it seems I need to install Machinekit-HAL followed by EMCApplication.

Are you running on BBB too?

I'm starting to wonder whether I should just stick with my ancient version of Machinekit which just works...

[Martin Berriman]

I realised earlier that I have been using a version of Machinekit packaged for the BBB by Robert C. Nelso.

It seems like there is a version from May this year so I will have a play with that (https://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Debian_9_.28Stretch.29_-_Monthly)