Chapter 32. CC Programming Tools for Fedora

Chapter 32. C/C++ Programming Tools for Fedora

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Programming in C with Linux

• Elements of the C/C++ Language

• Using the C Programming Project Management Tools Provided with Fedora Core Linux

• Using the GNU C Compiler

• A Simple C Program

• Graphical Development Tools

• Additional Resources

• Reference

For many Linux users, coding means scripting. And why not? Most Linux distributions include Perl, Python, Tcl, and the bash, ksh, tcsh, and zsh shells all of which support a wide range of commands that can be combined, in the form of scripts, into reusable programs. Command scripts for shell programs (and utilities such as GNU's gawk) can be all the programming that many users need in order to customize their computing environments. (You can learn more about scripting in Chapter 14, "Automating Tasks," and Chapter 29, "Using Perl.")

However, many programs that process scripts (such as the various Linux shells, the gawk command, and the Perl interpreter) are written in the C and C++ languages.

Learning how to use a computer language such as C or C++ can be more complex and difficult than learning shell scripting. You must learn to think in terms of machine resources and the way actions are accomplished within the computer, taking into account the operating system, language syntax, and assorted development tools, rather than think in terms of user-oriented commands.

Of course, the main benefit of learning C or C++ is that Linux and nearly all its related software is open source if a program doesn't work the way you want it to, you can change it! You can also find a lot of "hidden" documentation in programmer comments inside the source to nearly all Linux programs.

Fedora comes with a diverse toolbox of program development software. There are C and C++ compilers, debuggers (used during the development process to find and diagnose errors), project organizing clients, graphical prototyping environments, and code management software. If you perform a full installation of Fedora from this book's CD-ROMs, you'll also be able to write Fortran 77, Java, and assembler (CPU-level) language programs.

This chapter focuses on C- and C++-related tools for Linux, such as the GNU C Compiler Collection (gcc) system, and prototyping environments for GNOME and the K Desktop Environment (KDE). The information presented here introduces some of the commands used to compile C and C++ programs, along with information about related programming tools.