Copyright © 1999 by Red Hat Software, Inc. All rights reserved. This software and text is licensed pursuant to the GNU General Public License version 2 or later versions [or GNU Lesser General Public License], a copy of which may be viewed at www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.

Abstract

Switching to Linux for your development projects can seem like a daunting task at first but given a little direction, you will find that the development environment is both powerful and easy to use.

This paper is designed as an introduction to development under Linux, and will help you get your feet wet with all of the tools that you will need for a large scale development project. For now, the scope of this tutorial is writing a program in C, and includes information on text editing, compiling, debugging, and version control.

Table of Contents

Overview
Setting Up Your Shell
Developing a Simple C Program with vi and gcc
Using gdb to Debug a C Program
Compiling Multiple .c and .h Files
Using make to Simplify the Build Process
Using the Concurrent Versions System for Source Management
Final Thoughts and Resources