[lug] Learning to code on Linux.

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 11:50 -0600, David L. Anselmi wrote:
> What's a good way to learn how to write C apps for Linux?

K&R to learn C.  Then the Steven's books:
http://www.kohala.com/start/

"Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment" should tell him most of
what he wants to know about file i/o, etc, string handling, etc.

> I expect he can figure out gcc, make, etc, but might need some help with 
> the easiest way to get source packages, how to use -dev packages, etc.

Writing POSIX C shouldn't require any special packages other than gcc,
make, etc.  However, that changes if you need special features like a
graphical interface (GTK+ is easiest with C), printing (look for the
cups-devel libraries), or high level web stuff (look for libXML -
http://xmlsoft.org/).

> Anyone run across a concise way to get started?

Concise?  If it was concise, everyone would do it.  ;-)

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                               
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org / http://www.graphics-muse.org
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