Customer Reviews

Porting Unix Software: From Download to Debug (Nutshell Handbooks)

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Unfortunately a large amount of the material in this book has become outdated -- autoconf ("./configure") and friends have successfully made hand-configuring most packages a thing of the past. Many of the constraints and issues in the book are not problems on modern systems -- gcc is still a bear, but it's a rare system that doesn't have the space to keep around all stages of the bootstrap.

If you have any sysadmin background, a lot of the book will be repetition; but if you are new to sysadmining (or porting), or are willing to skip over the bits you already know, it's still worth reading or skimming.

In addition there are still useful tidbits despite these issues. The discussion of terminal information, while a bit esoteric for some readers, is detailed. Although the OS's that the author uses for examples are older, the general principles still apply (especially BSD vs. SysV). The standards information is still useful, and the general "how to persuade a package to compile on a different OS" is excellent.

It also could be useful for the programmer -- being generally familiar with this book may help you write code that will be easier to port, and will definitely help you if you're porting your own code (look at the section on emulating unavailable behaviors.)

Don't expect to get a full 500 pages of useful information -- but the remaining pages are still worth the read.

This book is two books in one actually. First part of the book covers magnitude of problems you may encounter when trying to make and run new software on Unix-based machine. It describes the whole process from unpacking (can you believe one might have troubles unpacking stuff ?) and configuring to compiling and run-time debugging. Nothing of a rocket science, a book of advises instead. Lots of useful info. Second part is more of a reference. It lists differences between different flavours of Unix. Nothing deep in kernel, but rather library functions and #defines that behave differently and such. Warnings on when and where you can hit a brick wall. Pretty useful too. Regards must be given to Mr. Lehey for the language, the book is very easy to read.

I am a SysAdmin at an Organization with more than 150 Unix machines. I compile and install packages day in and day out. It was a really nightmare dealing with the packages from downloading to get it working. There was not a day I did not think why was not there a book that teaches more than README and the installation notes that come with the source tree, until I found this book.

Now this book just sits on my desk! It has become a handy reference for me. This book teaches you right from unpacking the source tree to the installation. This book also deals with the variations in systems calls, file systems, terminal handling, and other kernel features of various Unix Flavors.

If your job requires you to deal with the Unix software packages, this book is a must to have on your desk.

We @ S7 boasts ourselves as porting GURUs mainly to all flavors of Unix and we have this book as a must read for all engineers that we take on board. I strongly suggest this book to anyone who is trying to or planning to port their sofware.

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