Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Updating firmware
Updating the firmware used to be quite an involved process, but thanks to a user on
GitHub who goes by the alias "Hexxeh," we now have some code that automatically
does this for us.
The update tool has been included in the official repository, and you can simply install
it using
apt-get
and then execute it as shown in the following command lines:
sudo apt-get install rpi-update
sudo rpi-update
After the process is complete, you will need to restart the Pi in order to load the
new firmware.
You may find that running the firmware update process does not always solve a
particular problem. Sometimes, it may be easier to download the latest Raspbian
package and burn a completely new image to the SD card.
Updating packages
Keeping Raspbian packages up to date is also very important as many changes might
work together with fixes published in the firmware. First, we update the source list
that downloads a list of packages and their versions to the aptitude cache. Then,
as shown in the following command lines, we run the
update
command that will
compare the packages that are already installed and compare their dependencies,
then download and update accordingly:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Updating some packages like PHP might break the existing code
or applications.
Outcomes
If you have a long-term or production project that runs independently, it is NOT a
good idea to log in from time to time to update the packages. Windows users are
conditioned to update frequently, and it is very rare that something will go wrong.
Although on Linux running updates will update your software and operating
system components, it could cause incompatibilities.
