Linux File-System Hierarchy

The original spec seems to be this one:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

But this is the more readable version of it:
http://www.linux.com/guides/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/

This document is so important to understand what is going on with installing programs,
and where "your distro" may install it's programs.

C Programming on Linux

I'm downloading Emacs right now; never know, might want a debugger built into an editor, although I could try Glade.

Reading the book Advanced Linux Programming by New Rider Press. I notice that Emacs is for the X11, so it can't see my Gnome clipboard, so that's out. I see Kdevelop for KDE, but I have Gnome so I'm downloading Anjuta (thank goodness there is a package for a C/C++ IDE on Gnome). I don't see any debugging icons in Anjuta, and Glade looks much improved, although it's an old version for some reason.

Conclusion: I'll stick with GEdit for now. No need to mix up learning the fundamentals with what incomplete IDEs that are out there that get there value from additional plugin and documentation.

Finding a programming job

It would be nice to find a Linux programming job, but any programming job that pays the bills would do right now. In fact, that alone I would be satisfied with.

So here it comes, time to send out the resume to local paper ads, Craigslist, Monster, etc.

XBoard

First of all, XBoard is the most popular open-source chessboard for Linux. I'm trying to get Xboard working on Edgy Eft. Xboard is looking for older versions of X11, like X11R4 and R5, but not R6 nor R7(Xorg?) I think I'll download it, Xorg source code, and if Xboard still doesn't work, then I'll personally try to upgrade the code. I don't know anything about X programming, and I could even try to write my own chessboard program for WxWidgets or Gtk+ if X11 programming documentation is not forthcoming.

Got XBoard to work with xorg, and it was easy! Just had to add a couple lines of code to XBoard's config.in, so that it would find xorg, and then recompiled config.in using autoconf.

Make

Make uses a makefile that describes how all of the files that we specify should be compiled together. You can write your own makefile for your program.

Autoconf is a program that can use a configscript to create a configure program. 'configure' lets you know if you will be able to compile the source files on the target system successfully. If successful, it "creates" your makefile.

Creating a package is a little different, it looks to see whether other programs are installed that are needed to allow your program to run.

With packages, there is the possibility of using binaries that the packaging system knows about, but this by itself doesn't play well with programs compiled on the users system. Strikes me as a catch-22 with Linux. Could use a script within the package to look for the right files needed from external libraries by checking paths they "should" be at. That would be a mixture of a package system with a compiled system.

From what I've read of FreeBSD, you have a ports system, whose base install apps would fall within standard FreeBSD locations, and then you have the apps you compile separately to wherever. Kinda reminds me of sattelites; they are useful but also "orbit around" out there.

So, I am going to build a package for a game for a gentoo user I met on Sourceforge. This is odd and interesting because gentoo users basically compile everything on their system, so it's not really for his system.

Purpose of this blog

This blog exists to advance the Linux programming abilities for the dear reader of this blog.

Topics I'll be covering will include:
Make
GTK+
C, BASH
Device Drivers
Kernel
Packaging - dpkg, rpm, .tgz, etc.