Can't load jevois packages on Raspian stretch (RPI3)

Question

Trying

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://jevois.usc.edu/apt stretch main"

Key part of error message:
"Error: could not find a distribution template for Raspbian/stretch"

Full interaction:

pi@c0:~/jevois $ sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://jevois.usc.edu/apt stretch main"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 95, in <module>
    sp = SoftwareProperties(options=options)
  File
"/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py",
line 109, in __init__
    self.reload_sourceslist()
  File
"/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py",
line 599, in reload_sourceslist
    self.distro.get_sources(self.sourceslist)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/aptsources/distro.py", line 89, in
get_sources
    (self.id, self.codename))
aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a
distribution template for Raspbian/stretch

*******************************************************

By the way, you should mention in your instructions that folks using
Raspian need to
sudo apt-get install dirmngr software-properties-common
to follow your instructions on loading USC software.

Answer 1

Yes, we do not provide debian packages for raspberry pi. Those are for 64 bit intel only.

The reason is that the rpi is just too slow and limited to be usable in practice. Because jevois C++17 code uses templates abundantly, attempting to compile it on more than one thread on RPi3 gives rise to out of memory errors. Then, just trying to compile jevois and jevoisbase using 1 thread on a rpi takes over an hour...  versus 2 minutes on a dual Xeon machine.

Hence the model for jevois is cross compilation: a powerful intel computer is used to cross compile code that will run on the arm processor inside Jevois. We have more info on this at 

http://jevois.org/doc/Concepts.html