So, a couple of years ago I bought a BBB. Had a play for a while, then it ended up in a drawer as newer boards with more features blew past it.
I’ve now found that drawer! This BBB has Debian 7 installed. I’ve done an apt-get upgrade and update and it all seems to work. I’ve been looking at bonescript as being a quick and easy way to get it to do something useful with peripherals. However all the documentation seems to be for bonescript on Angstrom - and even then, most of it is a year or two old.
I’ve run the stuff at https://github.com/jadonk/bonescript that is pertinent to Debian which amounts to just a few lines:
Debian and Ubuntu prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential g++ python-setuptools python2.7-dev
wget -c https://raw.github.com/RobertCNelson/tools/master/pkgs/dtc.sh
chmod +x dtc.sh
./dtc.sh
but which does NOT end up with anything that seems to produce any results. Specifically, the one-liner:
node -pe “require(‘bonescript’).getPlatform().bonescript”
produces no output. Nothing. No error messages, no status, nothing.
My simple question is: is bonescript on Debian dead? Am I wasting my time trying to use it and should I be looking at some other way to interact with GPIOs and all the other peripherals?
With thanks,
Pete
Well the above doesn't install bonescript...
npm install -g bonescript
Regards,
Hi Pete,
Funny you’re asking that question at the very moment I’m pondering the answer, as well. I’m deep into finishing up the last draft of a book for (very) beginning BBB users and makers, and have been using Bonescript periodically in chapters.
Currently, I’m trying to develop an example using resion.io + Docker as an instance of the direction IoT development may move with “containerized” apps. I want to use Bonescript with some simple sensor scenarios.
But since there’s no capemgr support, yet, for >3.8 kernel (unless I’m mistaken?), using the library may be a dead end for now. It also seems that more developer interest is moving toward other libraries/toolsets like Johnny-Five since you can jump to non-BBB boards easily.
Sorry for the blasphemy. I’m a big fan of Bonescript, especially for early users just diving into physical computing. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Charles Hamilton
(not the Charles with the magic config-pin utility)
So it would appear.
However, on my Debian install there is no such thing as “npm” and trying to install it fails:
root@bbb:~# uname -a
Linux bbb 3.8.13-bone37 #1 SMP Thu Jan 23 00:56:41 UTC 2014 armv7l GNU/Linux
root@bbb:~# npm
-bash: npm: command not found
root@bbb:~# apt-get install npm
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package npm
root@bbb:~#
Of course I was mistaken about capemgr support…Hard to keep up with RCN. Thanks for the speedy correction.
Bonescript future still TBD, I think.
Charles
npm is only available in jessie <-> sid...
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/npm
We backported it to wheezy for beagleboard.org, so either upgrade to
jessie or feel free to use beagleboard's image.
Regards,
So it would appear.
However, on my Debian install there is no such thing as “npm” and trying to install it fails:
Perhaps not what you want to do . . . but if you install from source( compile from source ), you get npm . . . then you can npm install bonescript. However, no telling what that’d do to an existing cloud9 install. It’d probably “hose” it.
Also, I read quite some time back that installing Nodejs via the APT package manager on Wheezy was a bad idea. That is for the Wheezy official repo. Also something about npm not being included . . . which seems you already figured out.
I do know that compiling from source works fine, but does require a specific config option to to work right on the BBB ( if not used, it will compile / install i386 binaries . . . kind of silly.)
I have notes somewhere when I did this myself. If interested.
