 |
GetTextbooks.co.uk
Compare Prices & Save up to 90% |
|
|
|
| Login | Sign up | My Wish List |
 | | Linux Application Development by Michael K. Johnson, Erik W. Troan ISBN-10: 9780201308211 ISBN-10: 0-201-30821-5 ISBN-13: 9780201308211 ISBN-13: 978-0-201-30821-1 Hardcover 1998-04-20 Addison-Wesley Professional Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Book Description This practical reference guides programmers developing Linux applications or porting applications from other platforms. Linux is fundamentally similar to Unix-so, much of the book covers ground familiar to Unix programmers-but this book consistently addresses topics from a Linux point of view. The aim throughout is to provide the detailed information you need to take full advantage of Linux. If you are already a proficient Unix programmer, this book will greatly facilitate your transition to Linux. You will also find helpful discussions of some tricky Unix topics, such as process and session groups, job control, and tty handling. If you are a C programmer, but know neither Unix nor Linux, reading this book in its entirety and working with its numerous examples will give you a solid introduction to Linux programming. If you are already a Linux programmer, this book's clear treatment of advanced and otherwise confusing topics will surely make your programming tasks easier. Linux Application Development is divided into four parts. Part 1 introduces you to Linux(the operating system, licenses, and documentation. Part 2 covers the most important aspects of the development environment(the compilers, linker, loader, and debugging tools. Part 3-the heart of the book-describes the interface to the kernel and to the core system libraries, including discussion of the process model, file handling, directory operations, signal processing (including the Linux signal API), job control, the POSIX( termios interface, sockets, and the Linux console. Part 4 describes important development libraries with interfaces more independent of the kernel. The source code from the book is freely available at http://www.awl.com/cseng/books/lad/. | ||
Reviews | ||
Excellent Introductionary Book I've been a typical Win32 programmers living in a world of Microsoft development tools and APIs. Having had tried Linux development (as a hobby) numerous times in the past I always got stopped by the lack of quality books similar in quality to what Microsoft Press was pumping out for Windows programmers. This one, however, is just excellent. It's not narrow as some Linux books are, and it's not one of those ancient UNIX programming books. 80/20 rule applies to many things including learning. You'll be using just 20% of "linux programming knowledge" at least 80% of the time. This book carefully picks those 20%, just the "right stuff" and captures it beautifully. And it's a hardcover too. Buy it. | ||
Great book to get started with Linux I bought this book to help me with my first C programming project under Linux. I actually read the first 4 chapters straight through, which is unusual for a programming book. The section on termio was excellent and helped me to avoid many of the pitfalls that are overlooked on several programming web sites. This was probably one of the most useful programming books I have bought in the last year. (I usually buy 15 to 20 a year). | ||
I found the book I need Here the book I need for GNU/Linux System Programming :) And if you have also "Advanced Programming in Unix Environment" the you have the complete bible to program in Linux Environment :) | ||
Overrated Linux programming book I read both editions of this book. When I read the 1st edition, the 2nd was not out, yet. Then the 2nd came out, I read it, too, hoping it's much improved. I was not impressed, however, either. To me, there is plenty of what listed in the book, but not enough why on the things listed. A better alternative, I think, is "Linux Programming by Example: The Fundamentals" by Arnold Robbins. Arnold says in that book he plans to write more subsequent volumes on the subject. | ||
A lot of good info in one place, but organization needs work The Linux operating system provides a sophisticated framework for running programs. Within its sturdy covers, Linux Application Development by Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan provides much of what intermediate to advanced programmers need to know to take advantage of that framework. The book is divided into four major parts: Getting Started, Development Tools and Environment, System Programming and Development Libraries. Part 1 - Getting Started, is a very high-level overview of Linux itself. The three chapters cover barely 20 pages, and discuss the history of Linux, its licensing, and the online documentation. Part 2 - Development Tools and Environment gets more detailed, but ends up as a medium-level view of what tools you might use to actually create and debug your application. Six chapters covering about 75 pages discuss editors (Emacs and vi), make, the GNU debugger gdb, tracing, gcc options, glibc, memory debugging tools, libraries, and the environment. Each chapter feels a little light-weight except for the one on memory debugging tools. If the first two parts seemed to just skim the surface somewhat, Part 3 - System Programming definitely dives into the deep end of the pool. Part 3 has 13 chapters and covers 450 pages, almost two-thirds of the total book. My major complaint with Part 3 is that related chapters appear to be separated by others. Five major groups of functionality are covered. The Unix/Linux process model is explained in detail in Chapter 10, and should be followed by chapter 15, which goes into job control. File handling is introduced in chapter 11, expanded in chapter 13, and directory handling is covered in chapter 14. Interprocess communication is discussed in chapters 12 - Signal Processing (discussing simple semaphores) and chapter 17 - Networking with Sockets, which extends IPC across the network. User interfaces are covered in chapters 16 (terminals and pseudo-terminals), 20 (virtual consoles), and 21 (text-based interfaces for the Linux console). Timers, encryption, and writing secure programs are the topics of chapters 18, 19, and 22. Finally, Part 4 covers the various development libraries commonly available to the programmer. Chapter 23 covers the ins and outs of string handling and regular expressions. Using S-Lang to handle the terminal is the main interest of the next chapter. Chapter 25 discusses database interfaces, specifically qdbm, which is licensed under the LGPL. Traditional option functions getopt and getopt_long and their cousin on steriods popt are detailed in the following chapter. The final two chapters cover dynamic loading of shared objects with the advantages that provides, and user identification and authentication, covering id-to-name translation, and Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). This book has a lot of information packed within its covers, When programming, one needs a number of reference books at hand, and Linux Application Development should definitely be one of the handiest. My only concerns were how the first two parts seemed skimpy compared to the rest of the book, and the part on System Programming could have been laid out better. That said, Linux Application Development rates a 4 out of 5. | ||