Linux Application Development (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Erik W. Troan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Johnson and Troan are Linux developers for Red Hat software, a company that distributes and supports the Linux operating system. This book will appeal to beginning programmers trying to understand how operating systems work in a general way as well as to advanced programmers porting software from UNIX systems to Linux. This book is recommended for large public and all university libraries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

This practical reference guides programmers developing Linux applications or porting applications from other platforms. Linux is fundamentally similar to Unix-so, much of the book covers ground familiar to Unix programmers-but this book consistently addresses topics from a Linux point of view. The aim throughout is to provide the detailed information you need to take full advantage of Linux.

If you are already a proficient Unix programmer, this book will greatly facilitate your transition to Linux. You will also find helpful discussions of some tricky Unix topics, such as process and session groups, job control, and tty handling.

If you are a C programmer, but know neither Unix nor Linux, reading this book in its entirety and working with its numerous examples will give you a solid introduction to Linux programming.

If you are already a Linux programmer, this book's clear treatment of advanced and otherwise confusing topics will surely make your programming tasks easier.

Linux Application Development is divided into four parts. Part 1 introduces you to Linux(the operating system, licenses, and documentation. Part 2 covers the most important aspects of the development environment(the compilers, linker, loader, and debugging tools. Part 3-the heart of the book-describes the interface to the kernel and to the core system libraries, including discussion of the process model, file handling, directory operations, signal processing (including the Linux signal API), job control, the POSIX( termios interface, sockets, and the Linux console. Part 4 describes important development libraries with interfaces more independent of the kernel. The source code from the book is freely available at http://www.awl.com/cseng/books/lad/.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (April 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201308215
• ISBN-13: 978-0201308211
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,297,643 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening Introduction plus Excellent Reference Book, July 3, 1999

By A Customer

This book was written with an easy to read style, and the content is excellent. I'll forgive them for not including anything related to X11 programming, but they mention that their reason was that X Windows programming is not specific to Linux, and this is a *LINUX* programming book. Well fine, but I still have to find a book on X Programming. Imagine a book on Windows NT Programming that skipped all the GUI parts. I guess the Unix crowd is 10 years behind the NT crowd in acceptance of GUIs.

Reading this book made many of the arcane details of Unix architecture make sense, finally. I have read many Linux books, and most are long on technical drivel and short on enlightenment. If you are enlightened, you don't need the drivel, because the technical details are easy to absorbe and remember once they make sense.

This book excels at making sense of Linux. It should have been called "Making Sense of Linux Application Development", because that's what it is. You could probably get a lot out of it, even if you don't know C very well or you aren't all that interested in C programming in Linux. The explanations are clearly presented, and the chapters stand alone, and are a great reference material, as well as interesting general reading for those interested in the internals of Linux.

This book explains a lot of services that the kernel provides, especially in regards to the Linux process model and unix filesystems, as well as interprocess communications (Unix domain sockets) and network programming (TCP/IP sockets).

CAVEAT: This shouldn't be your *first* Linux book. There's a lot of material besides the writing of the code that you need to cover first. To get you comfy in the classic Unix shell environment read Hands On Unix, by Mark Sobell.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A book of lists, July 13, 2000

By	JK "jk" (USA) - See all my reviews

Unless you want a full documentation on the history and licensing of Linux, don't bother with this book. All the "application development" sections are nothing but lists. They are vast lists, but there are no explainations with them (I mean to the point that he drops function names without telling you even so much as their signature.) It seems as though the author knows what function calls and macros are available in the Linux API but has no idea what they do, and therefore neither will you. The only reason I give this book two stars is for its GNU section (but you can buy "Programming with GNU Software" for that). You are much better off with "Advanced Programming in a UNIX Environment" or, for a beginner, "Beginning Linux Programming". As a final thought, I really wish that someone could write a book on Linux that could parallel Stevens' UNIX book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too bad for all the typo's..., October 12, 1999

By A Customer

Is a usefull book once you download the list of typo's in the book(from their all but hidden under a rock website). It was very troublesome to find so many things that did not work. A few needed help even after you made the recommended corrections. Already being a c programmer I was able to figure things out and get basically everything to work just fine with a little hacking, but a newbie might throw his computer out of the window in frustration. Lots of books have had typo's lately. I always get the phone call from a worried friend wondering what they are doing wrong only to find out that it was a simple mistake of the program never being tested before being printed in the book. Oh well, it's in a few of the newer O'Reily's even. It's just a shame, i'm glad I learned how to code back in the dark ages when books were tested before they were shipped.