Linux Tutorial - Software Development on Linux

• GNU gmake/make: GNU make is a build system based on the original UNIX "make" build system but with more features. Install RPM package: make
  GNU make manual
• scons: Newer python based, cross platform build system. Great for cross platform development (i.e. MS/Windows and Linux/Unix)

GNU Makefile OS dependencies:

OS = $(shell uname -s) ifeq "$(OS)" "CYGWIN_NT-5.0" OS_DIR = win-i32 CC = /usr/bin/g++ CPPFLAGS = -g -mms-bitfields -mno-cygwin -mwindows LDFLAGS = -g -mms-bitfields -mno-cygwin -mwindows AR = /usr/bin/ar CP = /usr/bin/cp MKDIR = /usr/bin/mkdir RM = /usr/bin/rm ECHO = /usr/bin/echo TOUCH = /usr/bin/touch endif ifeq "$(OS)" "Linux" OS_DIR = linux-i32 CC = /usr/bin/g++ CPPFLAGS = -g LDFLAGS = -g AR = /usr/bin/ar CP = /bin/cp MKDIR = /bin/mkdir RM = /bin/rm ECHO = /bin/echo TOUCH = /bin/touch endif ifeq "$(OS)" "SunOS" OS_DIR = sun-sparc CC = /usr/local/bin/g++ CPPFLAGS = -g LDFLAGS = -g AR = /usr/ccs/bin/ar CP = /bin/cp MKDIR = /bin/mkdir RM = /bin/rm ECHO = /bin/echo TOUCH = /bin/touch endif ifeq "$(OS)" "IRIX64" # SGI OS_DIR=sgi-mips CC=/usr/bin/CC CPPFLAGS = -g -c -LANG:std -n32 -ptused LDFLAGS = -v -g -LANG:std -n32 -ptused AR = /usr/bin/ar CP = /usr/bin/cp MKDIR = /sbin/mkdir RM = /sbin/rm ECHO = /sbin/echo TOUCH = /sbin/touch endif ... help: @-$(ECHO) "make all - builds executable/library" @-$(ECHO) "make install - installs components" @-$(ECHO) "make clean - removes object files and executable/library" @-$(ECHO) "make clean_all - removes all object files, all object dirs, executable/library" ...

Also see YoLinux C/C++ gcc/g++ cross platform tips

• GNU:
  • Sun: configure tutorial
  • Autoconf - manual
  • Automake - manual
  • Libtool - manual
• Autoconf Intro - Peter Vrancx
• Autoconf example
• GNU Autoconf, Automake and Libtool - [Online book] [GNU autoconf]

• Cabie: Distributed and multiplatform build servers. (Perl, MySQL) Configured for use with Subversion, CVS or Perforce CM systems.
  YoLinux.com: Cabie installation and configuration
• BuildBot: Distributed and multi-platform build servers. (Python)
• Tinderbox2: (Mozilla.org project) For use with Bonsai and CVS.
• NightWatch: Java build, JUnit test system (Perl)
• Cruise Control: Continous build system (build and test after each check-in) based on ANT, JUNIT, ... Plugins (triggers) for Subversion, Perforce and Clearcase.
• Apache Continuum: supports Apache Maven and Apache Ant.
• Hudson: MIT licensed, written in Java, runs in servlet container, supports CVS, Subversion, Ant, Maven, and shell scripts.

Commercial:

• Build Monkey
• Zutubi: Pulse
• AntHill
• Parabuild
• IBM/Rational BuildForge
• JetBrains: TeamCity - Web-based with IDE (IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio) support.

• TRAC: Simple, web based, intuitive bug and change tracking. Has a good interface with Subversion. Click around and view a current project using TRAC.
• Tigris.org: Scarab - From the Subversion crew. Interfaces with Subversion CM revision control system. Data entry, queries, reports, notifications to interested parties, collaborative accumulation of comments, dependency tracking. Web based.
• Bugzilla - Database for bugs. Allows people to report bugs and assigns these bugs to the appropriate developers.
• GNATS - Utilities to formulate and administer a database of Problem Reports grouped by site-defined "problem categories." Organizes the large volume of email that flows between end users and software maintainers by defining a database made up of archived and indexed email messages.
• SeaPine.com: TestTrack Pro - Web based defect/bug tracker which integrates with Surround SCM, Visual SourceSafe, ClearCase, PVCS, Perforce, CVS, StarTeam, and SourceOffSite.
• IBM/Rational: ClearQuest - works with their Clearcase change management system. Commercial product. Client application and web interface.

• wxWindows.org - GUI Toolkit to port MFC based applications to Linux
  • IBM: A step-by-step guide to using wxWindows
  • An intro to the portable C++ and Python GUI toolkit
• XForms - GUI toolkit based on Xlib
• FFTW.org: Library for computing the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)
• PETSc - The Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation
• Netlib.org - collection of mathematical software, papers, and databases.
• NAG.com: Numerical Algorithms Group - Commercial software components.
• University of Tennessee: Innovative Computing Laboratory (ICL) - Distributed computing, algebra, ...
• NCBI: Tools for data mining - Genetic related
• TGS.com: Many 3-D graphics development tools - Commercial
• OpenHSF - Open format for sharing of visualization data using HOOPS Stream Format (HSF)
• Voice/Speach:
  • Plum Voice Portals - telephone voice response systems. [PlumGroup.com]
  • University of Edinburgh: Centre for Speech Technology Research: VoiceXML
  • Festvox.org: CMU Speech Synthesis
• Kinesix.com: Sammi - Dynamic visualizations widgets for C++ and Java
• SL.com: Sherrill and Lubinski SL-GMS - Dynamic real-time visualizations widgets for C++ and Java
• Tibco: SmartSockets

Cross Platform API's:

• GTK.org [Portable GUI] / Gnome/GDK [Portable API] - Multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces
• Apache Portable Runtime - C
• ACE - C++
• NSPR: NetScape Portable Runtime
• Yolinux: List of Cross platform GUI frameworks

• RPM.org: Building an RPM
• setup.sh - Shell script with built-in ./configure, make and make install.
• Makeself - Self extracting shell script archive
• Snarf - Web download (http, ftp, ...) and install
• Loki: Update Tool

• Running Red Hat 7.1 (glibc 2.2.2) but compiling for Red Hat 6.2 compatability.
  See RELEASE-NOTES
  

          export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
          . /usr/i386-glibc21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
      

• To add libraries to be included during dynamic linking, add the entry to the file /etc/ld.so.conf OR add the the library path to the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH.

  Sample: /etc/ld.so.conf

  /usr/X11R6/lib /usr/lib ... .. /usr/lib/sane /usr/lib/mysql /opt/lib

  Add the library path to this file and then execute the command ldconfig to configure the linker run-time bindings.
  You can use the "-f file-name" flag to reference another configuration file if you are developing for different environments. See man page for command ldconfig.

• To include the library during execution, add the library path to the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
  (Linux/Solaris: LD_LIBRARY_PATH, SGI: LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH, AIX: LIBPATH, Mac OS X: DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, HP-UX: SHLIB_PATH)

• Direct loader to preload a specific shared library before all others: export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libXXX.so.x; exec program
  Also see:
  • man page to: programming interface to the dynamic linking loader.
  • Linux function interception.

• Including a library in the compile statement: gcc src-file.c -lm -lpthread
  The libraries referenced in this example for inclusion during linking are the math library and the thread library. They are found in /usr/lib/libm.a and /usr/lib/libpthread.a.

• ld.so - a.out dynamic linker/loader

• Environment variable to highlight warnings, errors, etc: export CC="colorgcc"

• Linux distros and releases:
  

  Red Hat/Fedora Kernel Libraries GCC FC 4 2.6.11-1.1369 glibc-2.3.5-10 4.0.0-8 FC 3 2.6.9-1.667 glibc-2.3.3-74 3.4.2-6 FC 2 2.6.5-1 glibc-2.3.3-27 3.3.3-7/3.4.0 FC 1 2.4.22-1.2115 glibc-2.3.2-101 3.3.2-1 RH 9.0 glibc-2.3.2 3.2.2 RH 8.0 glibc-2.2.93 3.2 RH 7.3 glibc-2.2.5 2.96 RH 7.2 glibc-2.2.4 2.96 RH 6.2 glibc-2.1.3 2.91 RH 5.x glibc-2.0 RH 4.x libc5

  RHEL Kernel Libraries GCC RHEL5 2.6.18-8 2.5-12 4.1.1-53 RHEL4 2.6.9-5 2.3.4-2 3.4.3-9 RHEL3 2.4.21-4 2.3.2-95.3 3.2.3-20 CENTOS Kernel Libraries GCC Centos4 2.6.9-22 2.3.4-2.13 3.4.4-2 Centos3 2.4.21-37 2.3.2-95.37 3.2.3-53 SuSE Pro Kernel Libraries GCC 10 2.6.13-15 9.3 2.6.11 glibc-2.3.4-23 3.3.5-5 9.2 2.6.8-24 glibc-2.3.3-118 3.3.4-11 9.1 2.6.4-52 glibc-2.3.3-98 3.3.3-41 9.0 glibc-2.3.2 3.3.1 8.2 glibc-2.3.2 3.3 8.1 glibc-2.2.5 3.2 SuSE Enterprise Kernel Libraries GCC 9.0 2.6.5

• How to generate a library:
  • Compile: cc -c ctest1.c ctest2.c
  • Create library "ctest.a": ar -cvq ctest.a ctest1.o ctest2.o
  • List files in library: ar -t ctest.a
  • Using library: cc -o executable-name prog.c ctest.a
  • Example files:
    • ctest1.c

      ctest1(int *i) { *i=5; }

    • ctest1.c

      ctest1(int *i) { *i=100; }

    • prog.c

      #include <stdio.h> main() { int x; ctest1(&x); printf("Valx=%d\n",x); }

  Historical note: After creating the library it was once necessary to run the command: ranlib ctest.a. This created a symbol table within the archive. Ranlib is now embedded into the "ar" command.

• How to generate a shared object: (Dynamically linked object library file.)

      gcc -fPIC -c *.c
      gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libfoo.so.1 -o libfoo.so.1.0   *.o
      

  Notes:
  • Option -fPIC: Compiler directive to output position independent code suitable for dynamic linking.
  • Pass options to linker: -Wl.
    In this example the options to be passed on to the linker are: "-soname libfoo.so.1".
  • Option -shared: Produce a shared object which can then be linked with other objects to form an executable.
  • Option -o: Output of operation. In this case the name of the shared object to be output will be "libfoo.so.1.0
  Man Pages:
  • gcc - GNU C compiler
  • ld - The GNU Linker

• Unit test: Testing/Debugging C++ classes (this also applies to C functions)
  Create test main program which by default is not compiled. For debugging and test purposes have the main invoked with a compiler or makefile flag. Implementing this method allows the test program to always be available and in sync with the classes and/or functions within the file.
  See example C++ (ManageNumbers.cpp) program and test case main.
  • Regular compile: g++ -c ManageNumbers.cpp
  • Compile for test: g++ -DMAIN -c ManageNumbers.cpp
  Note: The GNU gcc group often uses the define flag "TEST".

  Create a target in the makefile for the unit test:

  ... testModule1: module1 g++ -DMAIN -c ManageNumbers.cpp ...

• Internationalization:
  • Message translation see GNU "gettext".
  • If available: ./configure --with-included-gettext
  • Internationalized packages usually have many `po/LL.po' files, where LL gives an ISO 639 two-letter code identifying the language. (i.e. environment variable LANG=en)
  • catgets:
    • ./configure --with-catgets
    • See man page for C function catgets
  • Language codes are NOT the same as the country codes given in ISO 3166.
  • See man page for C functions setlocale, charsets, unicode
  • International character sets: Unicode.org

YoLinux Software Development Tutorials:

• Editors:
  • VI / VIM - Advanced editing - tutorial, tips and tricks
  • X-Emacs - Editing C++ code - Use, settings, code beautification
• Source Code Control/Revision:
  • CVS source code control - Track and manage a set of files and their revisions.
  • RCS source code control - Track and manage individual files and their revisions.
  • IBM/Rational Clearcase:
    • Clearcase Client Installation
    • Clearcase commands
• C++ Programming on Linux:
  • C++ STL (Standard Template Library) example for Linked Lists
  • Linux/Gnu C++ string class examples and tutorial
  • Use of structures in C++ - This example shows the use of a constructor with a structure. The stuff they never included in the text books.
  • Programming web server CGI programs with C++ and the GNU CgiCC library
  • C++ Coding styles and practices
  • C++ Memory corruption and leaks
• Tips and Best Practices for Microsoft Visual C++ users (So they don't make ugly files and mess up your project.)
• CORBA, OmniORB, C++ and remote services (client/server request)
• Fork, exec and process control
• Threads:
  • POSIX Threads - make your code run faster and more scalable.
  • GNOME GDK Threads (g_threads) - Cross platform threads API.
• GNOME GTK+ Programming Tips and Tricks - Using the GTK+ cross platform GUI API to build an interactive application.
• XML and parsing XML with Gnome libXML2
• Mixing C and FORTRAN language subroutines
• JAVA on Linux
• OpenLDAP C programming SDK Man Pages, RFC's and Links

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Links:

• Tigris.org - Open Source Software engineering, issue tracking and collaberation tools
  • ArgoUML - UML modeling tool
  • Subversion - Version control CVS replacement
    • Subversion / Trac server installation and configuration TUTORIAL
    • Subversion user TUTORIAL - commands
• Compiler Links
• C++ Links
• ADAhome.com - ADA home page
• ManEdit - GUI tool for creating/editing man pages.
• Programming topics:
  • Design Patterns, Pattern Languages, and Frameworks
  • Secure programming HOWTO - by David A. Wheeler
  • Testing framework tools
  • Security:
    • BOON: Buffer Overflow detection

Books:

	"Advanced Linux Programming" by Mark Mitchell, Jeffrey Oldham, Alex Samuel, Jeffery Oldham ISBN # 0735710430, New Riders Good book for programmers who already know how to program and just need to know the Linux specifics. Covers a variety of Linux tools, libraries, API's and techniques. If you don't know how to program, start with a book on C.
	"Advanced UNIX Programming" Second Edition by Marc J. Rochkind ISBN # 0131411543, Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series
	"Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" First Edition by W. Richard Stevens ISBN # 0201563177, Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series It is the C programmers guide to programming on the UNIX platform. This book is a must for any serious UNIX/Linux programmer. It covers all of the essential UNIX/Linux API's and techniques. This book starts where the basic C programming book leaves off. Great example code. This book travels with me to every job I go to.
	"Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction" by Steve McConnell ISBN # 0735619670, Microsoft Press This book teaches coding style and maturity to programmers without. It is software lessons, guidance and experience in a book. It will make you a better programmer by teaching you how to code with style and grace.
	"UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1: Sockets Networking API" Third Edition by W. Richard Stevens, Bill Fenner, Andrew M. Rudoff, Richard W. Stevens ISBN # 0131411551, Addison-Wesley Pub Co; 3 edition (October 22, 2003) This book covers POSIX, IPv6, network APIs, sockets (elementary, advanced, routed, and raw), multicast, UDP, TCP, Threads, Streams, ioctl. In depth coverage of topics.
	"UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1: Networking APIs - Sockets and XTI" Second Edition by W. Richard Stevens ISBN # 013490012X, Prentice Hall PTR This book covers network APIs, sockets + XTI, multicast, UDP, TCP, ICMP, raw sockets, SNMP, MBONE. In depth coverage of topics.
	"UNIX Network Programming Volume 2: Interprocess Communications" by W. Richard Stevens ISBN # 0130810819, Prentice Hall PTR This book covers semaphores, threads, record locking, memory mapped I/O, message queues, RPC's, etc.
	"Advanced Unix Programming" by Warren W. Gay ISBN # 067231990X, Sams White Book Series This book covers all topics in general: files, directories, date/time, libraries, pipes, IPC, semaphores, shared memory, forked processes and I/O scheduling. The coverage is not as in depth as the previous two books (Stevens Vol 1 and 2)
	"Linux Programming Bible" by John Goerzen ISBN # 0764546570, Hungry Minds, Inc This covers the next step after "C" programming 101.
	"Gnome/Gtk+ Programming Bible" by Arthur Griffith ISBN # 0764546406, Hungry Minds, Inc Covers programming desktop GUI applications with the Gnome/Gtk+ GDK API.
	Dr. Dobb's Journal Free subscription to the premier resource for professional programmers and software developers. Multi-language and multi-platform with program listings, coding tips, design issue discussions and algorithms. Subscribe here!	Free Subscription