New (unofficial) NQC package with LegoUSB support
I created a new nqc package with support for the USB IR tower of the Lego
Mindstorms set. The apt-getable repository can be accessed with the
following lines in /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://people.debian.org/~rafael/legousb ./
deb-src http://people.debian.org/~rafael/legousb ./
The legousb kernel module packages for the i386 kernel (version 2.4.19) are
there as well. If you have a custom kernel installed, or another version
than 2.4.19, you can easily generate new legousb-modules packages. Just
"apt-get install legousb-source" and read
/usr/share/doc/legousb/README.Debian for instructions.
There are two reasons why these packages are not uploaded to the official
Debian repository. First, there is a nasty license issue regarding one of
the header files in package legousb, what precludes its inclusion in Debian.
The Lego Company has been already contacted and we are trying to find a
solution for the problem.
The second reason is because the LegoUSB project (http://legousb.sf.net) is
not very active anymore and my packages do not work with usb-ohci (only with
usb-uhci). Although there are proposed patches to the Linux kernel 2.4 to
fix the problem (which seems to be already fixed in 2.5), I heard that the
kernel module approach should be abandoned and using libusb
(http://libusb.sourceforge.net/) is the way to go in the future.
In waiting for a more appropriate solution, the new nqc and legousb packages
is an interim solution for those poor people, like me, who bought the
Mindstorms 2.0 set for my kid and would like to use NQC with Linux. BTW, I
also included in the package a preliminary menu-based emacs mode (written by
me) that makes the use of NQC easier for kids.
Enjoy!
--
Rafael
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