Re: New Linux Annoyances Outline

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Dee-Ann LeBlanc wrote:

> Okay, folks, now that Paul, Justin and I are through our frighteningly
> busy seasons we're trying to get this outline wrapped up and this book
> underway. The latest outline is available at:
> 
> http://www.weinstein.org/linuxannoyances/outline.html
> 
> We know chapter 3 (development) is really sketchy and needs expanding,
> and I have this nagging feeling that we're missing _something_ but
> danged if I can figure out what it is. Please take a look if you have
> the time and share your thoughts! 

How about a section on debugging common compile-time failures? That seems to
frustrate a lot of newbies (personally, I recommend that they stick to
pre-built packages meant for their distro until they're ready for that level
of frustration, but do they listen??!)

Things you could cover:-

 - missing header files or static libraries, usually caused by missing
   -devel packages, particularly glibc and kernel headers.
 - missing libraries
 - out-of-date libraries and tools (short of upgrading automake/autoconf,
   I'm not sure there's a lot to recommend if they're the problem - and
   they're one of the most common problems, especially if the distro is
   getting a bit old). Some distros (e.g. RH) supply older versions of gcc
   as 'kgcc' and 'gcc296' which is probably worth a mention.
 - simple C syntax problems
 - warnings regarding the problems caused by getting actual packages
   installed out-of-sync with the package database.
 - notes regarding linking C++ code compiled with, say, gcc 3.2, against C++
   libraries compiled with gcc 2.96 (it probably won't work).

> Thanks to everyone who's contributed so far!!

HTH,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>