文档介绍：0172316072 intro 7/26/99 2:18 PM Page 1
Introduction
Linux has always provided a rich programming environment, and it has only grown rich-
er. Two pilers, egcs and pgcs, joined the GNU project’s gcc, the original Linux
compiler. In fact, as this book went to press, the Free Software Foundation, custodians of
the GNU project, announced that gcc would be maintained by the creators and maintain-
ers of egcs. A huge variety of editors stand alongside the spartan and much-maligned vi
and emacs’ plexity. Driven largely by the Linux kernel, GNU’s C library
has evolved so dramatically that a new version, glibc (also known as libc6) has emerged
as the standard C library. Linux hackers have honed the GNU project’s always service-
able development suite into powerful tools. New widget sets have taken their place
beside the old UNIX standbys. Lesstif is a free, patible implementation of
Motif ; KDE, the K Desktop Environment based on the Qt class libraries from
TrollTech, answers the desktop challenge posed by the X Consortium’s CDE (Common
Desktop Environment).
What This Book Will Do for You
In this book, we propose to show you how to program in, on, and for Linux. We’ll
focus almost exclusively on the C language because C is still Linux’s lingua franca.
After introducing you to some essential development tools, we dive right in to
system programming, followed by a section on munication work
programming.
After a section devoted to programming Linux’s user interface with both text-based and
graphical tools (the X Window system), a section on specialized topics, including shell
programming, security considerations, and using the GNU project’s gdb debugger,
rounds out the technical discussion. We close the book with three chapters on a topic
normally disregarded in programming books: delivering your application to users. These
final chapters show you how to use package management tools such as RPM, how to
create useful do