The Linux Development Platform
Configuring, Using, and Maintaining a Complete Programming Environment
Rafeeq Ur Rehman
Christopher Paul
Setting up a complete development environment using open source tools has always
been a challenging task. Although all of the development tools are available in the open source,
no comprehensive development environment exists as of today. This book is an effort to enable
the reader to set up and use open source to create such an environment. Each chapter of the book
is dedicated to a particular component of the development environment.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the practical software development life cycle and
stages. The chapter also provides information about the documentation required for all serious
software development projects. Guidelines are provided about criteria for selecting hardware
and software platforms.
Chapter 2 is about using editors. Editors are essential components of any software development
system. Selection of a good editor saves time and money in the development life cycle.
This chapter provides information about commonly used editors like Emacs, Jed and vim (vi
Improved).
Chapter 3 is about the GNU set of compilers commonly known as GCC. The procedure
for installation and use of gcc with different languages is presented here.
Larger software projects contain hundreds or thousands of files. Compiling these files in
an orderly fashion and then building the final executable product is a challenging task. GNU
make is a tool used to build a project by compiling and linking source code files. Chapter 4 provides
information on how to install and use this important tool.
Chapter 5 discusses debuggers. An introduction to commonly used debuggers is provided
in this chapter with an emphasis on the GNU debugger gdb.
Chapter 6 introduces CVS, which is the open source revision control system and is most
widely used in open source development. Setting up a CVS server is detailed in this chapter. You
will learn how to use remote the CVS server in a secure way.
There are tools other than compilers, debuggers and editors. These tools are discussed in
Chapter 7. These tools help in building good products.
xviii Preface
Open source tools are also widely used in embedded and cross-platform development.
Chapter 8 provides information using open source tools in such environments. Remote debugging
is an important concept and it is explained in this chapter.
Chapter 9 is the last chapter of the book and it provides a basic introduction to open source
Java development.
There is one important thing that you must keep in mind while reading this book. It is not
a tutorial on any language or programming techniques. It is about development tools and how to
use these. You need other books to learn programming languages and techniques.
The book explains the installation procedures of different tools. By the time you read this
book, new versions of these tools may be available. The installation procedures will not vary
drastically in these versions and you can use the steps explained in this book. In fact, most of the
open source tools employ the same compiling and installation procedure that you will note in
this book. This process has been consistent and is expected to remain the same in future as well.
After reading this book, we are very much hopeful that the reader will be able to understand
different components of a development system. You will also be able to create such a system
from scratch using open source tools.
Rafeeq Ur Rehman
Christopher Paul
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