786 Part VI . Programming in Linux This (Web hosting isp)
786 Part VI . Programming in Linux This chapter discusses the most popular programs and utilities of their types. In most cases, alternatives (and sometimes multiple alternatives) exist, but I cover only one to keep the discussion simple (I try to mention the others just so you re familiar with their names). What constitutes a well-stocked Linux development toolkit? The basics include an editor to write the code, one or more compilers to turn source code into binaries, and a debugger to track down the inevitable bugs. Most people have a favorite editor, and you d have a difficult time trying to persuade them to try a new one. Most editors support some set of programming-related functionality (some more than others, to be sure). There are too many to cover in this space, so suffice it to say: You ll need an editor. Perhaps the most popular editors are vi and emacs. Vi is a commercial editor, being part of the commercial UNIX offerings, so what you can actually get is usually a clone such as vim, elvis, or (my own personal favorite) nvi (new vi). I prefer nvi because it is a port of vi from BSD UNIX to Linux. Other popular editors include pico (the Pine mail client editor made available as a separate program), jed, joe, jove, and nano. If you prefer graphical editors, gedit in GNOME and kedit in KDE also provide basic programming support. Chapter 2 has a short tutorial on using the vi editor, as well as short descriptions of several other popular open source text editors. When it comes to compilers, GCC is the compiler of choice, or, if you will, the choice of the GNU generation, so this chapter discusses only GCC. Other compilers are available for Linux, such as Intel s C and C++ compiler and a very powerful (and expensive) offering from the Portland Compiler Group. Similarly, GDB, the GNU debugger, is the only debugger described in this chapter. In Chapter 28 you examined the role that programming interfaces play in simplifying the development task. Interfaces usually include one or more libraries that implement the functionality that interfaces define. Because you need to be able to work with programming libraries, utilities for creating, examining, and manipulating libraries also occupy the well-stocked programming toolkit. To this list, most developers would add a build automation tool, such as make, because most non-trivial projects need some sort of utility that handles building and rebuilding complicated, multi-file projects with a minimum of effort and time. Another challenge for large projects is tracking source code changes and maintaining a record of what code changed, when it changed, how it changed, and who changed it. This task is the province of source code control systems, and this chapter looks at two: RCS and CVS. Cross- Reference
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