CentOS - Sep 2010 - [Slightly OT] "Open Source Development + Tools" - Book/Resource?

Greetings all-

My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS*
CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here and
there...

I find that I'm being placed more and more into a 'quasi-developer'
role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically,
having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross
platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days trying to
work through some of these types of issues.

I'm hoping someone knows of a good resource or book that explains the
general 'open source' or '*NIX' method of application
development, compilation, and dependency/library handling. Specifically, how to
take source, and turn it into a "./configure, make, make install" type
release and everything that is involved in doing so.

I certainly have experience compiling, installing, using software in this
manner, but I would like (need?) to learn more about how it all works.

Google has been helpful if I'm looking for direct documentation of each of
the standard tools (gcc, make, autoconf, libtool, etc), but I've been unable
to find something that details the components together, and explains their
relationship.

Again, my apologies for the OT post. I hope some bright minds on the list can
shed a few thoughts.

--Tim

There's a review just now on Slashdot of a book that covers autoconf
and friends -- it sounds like it would cover at least some of what
you're after.  There's an older O'Reilly book on Make that might be
helpful too.

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010, Tim Nelson wrote:
>Greetings all-
>My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform *IS*
>CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind firewalls here
>and there...
>I find that I'm being placed more and more into a
'quasi-developer' role
>which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties. Specifically,
>having to work with the deep internals of make, autoconf, libtool, cross
>platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc. My head spins some days
>trying to work through some of these types of issues.
>I'm hoping someone knows of a good resource or book that explains the
>general 'open source' or '*NIX' method of application
development,
>compilation, and dependency/library handling. Specifically, how to take
>source, and turn it into a "./configure, make, make install" type
release
>and everything that is involved in doing so.
My first recommendation is always Kernighan and Pike's ``Unix
Programming Environment'', ancient but still excellent.

Another is ``GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool'' by Vaughan,
Elliston, Tromey, and Taylor.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
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Microsoft is to computers what Phillip Morris is to lungs.

On Mon, 2010-09-27 at 14:56 -0500, Tim Nelson wrote:
> Greetings all-
> 
> My apologies for the slightly OT post. My primary production platform
> *IS* CentOS 5.x with a minor scattering of 4.x machines behind
> firewalls here and there...
> I find that I'm being placed more and more into a
'quasi-developer'
> role which strays some from my normal system/network admin duties.
> Specifically, having to work with the deep internals of make,
> autoconf, libtool, cross platform compilation, non-standard libs, etc.
> My head spins some days trying to work through some of these types of
> issues.
There is an excellent series of articles on the Pedantic Programmer
blog.
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=185>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=186>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=187>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=188>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=189>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=192>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=196>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=199>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=201>
<http://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=208>


It walks through an example usage of make, pgk-config, etc...


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