Hmmmm, detonation eh?
Here's the way I remember it from my old days on the tools, & keep in mind, this is digging back about 35 to 40 years into my memory.
Accurate corrections are invited.

Definition.
Detonation is when the charge of fuel/air, or a portion of the charge of fuel/air, spontaneously combusts [explodes] or 'detonates' The fuel charge is supposed to 'burn'. It does in fact burn, almost at the same speed as the powder in a rifle round.

How does it happen?
This is when the fuel charge in the cylinder, compressed by the rising piston, is set alight by the plug. It starts to burn in a flame 'front' across the compressed charge, & as it burns, the rising pressure of the consumed fuel compresses the unburned fuel even more. There comes a time when the unburned charge simply reaches the point of self ignition & the whole thing just goes bang.

The fuel.
Fuels are like rifle powders, they are made with different burning rates. This is measured with an 'octane' number. The lower the number, the more volatile the fuel [the quicker it burns] & the more chance that it will detonate. Higher octane fuels burn more slowly. Low octane fuels are less costly to produce as they don't have as many additives to control the burn rate.

How do we control it?
Back in the days when petrol/gasoline was little more than kerosene, a brilliant engineer named Ricardo discovered that if you could agitate, or swirl the gas mixture, it would propagate the flame much faster & burn the fuel before it could explode. Up until then combustion chambers were little more than bowls over the piston & valves.
By placing a portion of the combustion chamber so that it covered a portion of the piston, leaving a very small gap between them [the thickness of the gasket in many cases] a portion of the charge would be squeezed in there, & it would jet out into the chamber causing a great deal of swirling. This allowed an increase in compression from something like 4 to 1 up to as high as 6.5 to 1 in some engines. This was on improved kerosene remember.
So high swirl can be a great help.

Fuel quality.
During the 50's fuel companies started adding Tetra Ethyl Lead to fuel & this slowed the burn rate noticeably, thereby raising the octane rating by a fair amount, but at a price. This is when 'Super' grade fuel was introduced & the increased octane rating allowed the Dodge hemi to go from 7.5 to 1 compression in '55 to 9.5 to 1 in 1956. That's two full points in one year. Other manufacturers did the same.

Timing
If the fuel is set on fire [ignited] too soon, with the piston still rising, it is trying to compress the fast rising gas pressure in the cylinder. This pressure can still rise high enough to cause the unburned portion of the charge to 'detonate'
Clearly, we want enough advance to ensure that the charge is lit & burning, but not so much as to overdo it. The faster the engine revs, the sooner in the cycle we need to light it as the burn rate stays fairly constant, but the time available to get it burning right becomes less.

Boost
Now this is where we have problems.
By cramming more air/fuel charge into the cylinder then it would normally hold, we push compression PRESSURES sky high, so we are already looking at the possibility of detonation by virtue of the higher cylinder pressures even as the spark plug sets it off.
The fixes for this are the same as before, but some are more practical.

REDUCE THE C.R.
By reducing the compression ratio, we actually get more fuel into the cylinder [more combustion chamber volume], but we do not face the potentially astronomic compression pressures that we would at standard C.R. The extra fuel in the cylinder still gives us more power, but with reduced chance of detonation. The lower the CR, the higher the permissible boost, but the more the engine becomes a slug when 'off boost'

HIGH SWIRL
While modern fuels have much better burn rates, the old high swirl rate still adds its measure of protection by propagating the flame front more quickly through the volume of the charge rather than needing to burn across it.

HIGH OCTANE
The higher the octane, the less chance of detonation.

BOOST RETARD
As the boost comes on, the compression pressures rise & the likelihood of combustion pressures rising too far during combustion also increase, so we need to set fire to it later than before to avoid excessive pressure rise & detonation.
We need to find a way to RETARD the spark from the position it would be in when normally aspirated while it is running & tie the amount directly to the boost pressure. This is the hard part & is, in my view, the single biggest killer of your carbureted, blown engines. With EFI, the timing map is tied directly to M.A.P. [Manifold Absolute Pressure] & the computer controls the timing, so all is well.
When the timing is right, the rise in pressure is also controlled by the fact that the piston will have gone past TDC before the critical pressure is reached & is moving away from the head, thereby increasing the volume in the cylinder & controlling pressure rise. [to a degree]

SUBSTANCE ABUSE.
Water injection is used to help cool the intake charge & also to slow the rate of combustion. The steam created assists in this regard while contributing to the pressure rise overall. Methylated Spirit also works I'm told, but I don't remember why. Octane boosters do the same thing, they slow down the burn rate [were talking milliseconds here] & allow a more controlled combustion.

CONTROL THE BOOST PRESSURE.
Yeah, I know, everyone wants 30 pounds of boost & an A15 becomes a V8 killer, for a few seconds. If your engine isn't built for that kind of power, then perhaps we should screw down the boost pressure.
The lower the boost, the fewer the problems & the longer it will live, so you need to strike a balance between power & engine life. That will be your call, but 5 to 6 psi is often a good starting point in a home built application, & work up from there.

Hopefully this overlong tome will provide some of the basics