On 03/07/14 22:55, Alexandre Torres Porres via Pd-list wrote:
Hi IOhannes, I read your other answer giving more info on why it could be outdated even if released a couple of weeks ago. I think I get, although I'd still assume or don't see why pd wouldn't be available at "apt-get" if it were up to date.
The meaning of 'stable' in debian is that it does not change, and apt-get fetches packages that you wish to install from this base (it would be possible for someone to maintain the latest pd as a raspbian package, but it is almost as easy to install from Millers site so no-one bothers ... the fact that pd is in debian means it gets tested on ARM and the version in 'stable' automatically gets built as part of raspbian with no extra work, which was especially nice when raspbian first came out). This system allows distributions like raspbian to have a predictable base that they can then take the time required to adapt for their purposes, and it allows sites like Millers to build the up-to-date versions within that known framework so that they 'just work' (and will still work a few weeks later) because all the stuff it depends on does not keep changing versions every day.
In the case of raspbian they have compiled debian with lots of modifications to suit their particular CPU and have added and keep working on lots of extra stuff that is specifically for their GPU and peripherals etc. They then maintain raspbian with all these added things updated from time to time but staying with 'stable' as the base. Presumably they will move to jessie sometime for their main version (probably not till they get it tested and running cleanly sometime after it is 'frozen' in advance of it becoming the new stable ... this freeze would be expected reasonably soon, debian does this on a two year cycle). But that does involve lots of work and lots of testing since they are building the whole of debian for an architecture which is halfway between the two official debian architectures (the CPU is a rather old version of ARM, but with floating point hardware). Chasing all the changes in the latest versions of everything all the time would be very hard work.
As for menus or desktop icons ... it is just a little text file called "puredata.desktop" containing something like:
[Desktop Entry] Name=Pure Data Comment=Visual dataflow programming platform for multimedia Comment[ca]=Plataforma de programació visual per aplicacions multimèdia Comment[de]=Grafische Datenflussprogrammierung für Multimedia Comment[es]=Plataforma de programación visual para aplicaciones multimedia Comment[fr]=Plateforme de programmation visuelle pour applications multimédia Comment[it]=Piattaforma di programmazione visuale per applicazioni multimedia Comment[pt]=Plataforma de programação visuais para multimedia Exec=pd -noadc %F Terminal=false Type=Application Icon=puredata.xpm Categories=AudioVideo;Audio;Video;Development MimeType=text/x-puredata;application/x-maxmsp;text/x-maxmsp; StartupNotify=false
using the appropriate "Exec=" line, and an appropriate file for "Icon="
if you add this file to the folder "/usr/share/applications" then it should turn up in menus, or if you put it on the desktop it should show up as an icon you can drag and drop to.
But the RPis are not very powerful, and running them without a desktop (using ssh or similar over ethernet and /etc/rc.local to launch stuff on boot) makes a lot of sense.
Simon