Re: [PLUG] Help Getting Started Linux Development

["Kyle R . Burton" <mortis@voicenet.com>]

> I'm new to Linux and I would like to start learning
> how to develop applications using the miriad of tools
> available for Linux development.

There are tutorials out there, I'd recommend searching on Google for
them.  

You may or may not want to also look at some of the more common
scripting languages like Python, Tcl or Perl.

Learning about the shell [bash] is probably another good idea if you're
new to Linux.  That will help you with doing some of the other
development.  Though the shell is becomming less and less necessary for
doing development - KDevelop (KDE's IDE) is pretty advanced at this
point and handles alot of the details for you.

> I've been "poisoned" by Microsoft in that my
> background is MS Access and VB.

If you have the desire to learn them, you will probably find that Perl
and Tk, or Python and Tk, or Tcl and Tk provide similar features and
functionality to VB (not counting the IDE).

> Where would you suggest I start my re-education?  I
> installed Mandrake and have played around with QT and
> also tried to compile a "hello world" with gcc (did't
> work, couldn't find iostream.h)

iostream.h is part of C++.  The C++ compiler under Linux is g++.  gcc is
the C compiler.  That might be why it couldn't find iostream.h.  The
other possibility is that the C++ headers weren't installed when you
installed your system.  You can use 'rpmdrake' to see what software
packages are installed, and to install software packages.

To try to find iostream.h on your system, you can use the command 'find'
from a shell:

[mortis@kookaburra BasicFlowcharting]$ find / -name iostream.h
/usr/include/g++-3/iostream.h
/usr/include/g++-2/iostream.h

To find out what package a file belongs to you can use the 'rpm' command:

[mortis@kookaburra mortis]$ rpm -qf /usr/include/g++-3/iostream.h 
libstdc++2.10-devel-2.96-0.48mdk

So, if you can't find iostream.h on your box, try installing libstdc++
with the 'rpmdrake' program.

If you're going to be doing C or C++ development, then you might also
want to learn a little about make.  You can do so by running 'info make'
from a shell.  The 'info' program takes a little effort to figure out,
but it's well worth it.  A brief write up on how to use info can be
found here:

  http://www.bgw.org/tutorials/operating_systems/linux/where_to_get_help.php3


Good Luck!

Kyle

-- 

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mortis@voicenet.com                            http://www.voicenet.com/~mortis
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