Appendix B Development Tools
Appendix B Development Tools Problem Statement Although more proprietary packages are available, there are abundant open source packages, giving its users unprecedented flexibility and freedom of choice, that most users can find an application that exactly meets their needs. However, it is also this pool of choices that drive individuals to share a wide range of preferences and biases. As a result, Linux/Open source packages (and softeware in general) is flooded with religious wars over programming languages, editors, licences, etc. Some are worthwhile debates, others are meaningless flamewars. Throughout Appendix B and next chapter, Appendix C, we intend to summarize a few essential tools (from our point of view) that may help readers to know the aspects and how-to of (1) development tools including programming, debugging, and maintaining, and (2) network experiment tools including name-addressing, perimeter probing, traffic-monitoring, benchmarking, simulating/emulating, and finally hacking. Section B.1 guides readers to begin the developing journey with programming tools. A good first step would be writing the first piece of codes using a Visual Improved (vim) text editor. Then compiling it to binary executables with GNU C compiler (gcc), and furthermore offloading some repetitive compiling steps to the make utility. The old 80/20 rule still works on programming where 80% of your codes come from 20% of your efforts leaving 80% of your efforts go buggy about your program. Therefore you would need some debugging tools as dicussed in Section 1.2. including source-level debugging, GNU Debugger (gdb), or a GUI fasion approach, Data Display Debugger (ddd), and debug the kernel itself using remote Kernel GNU Debugger (kgdb).
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