Question

Is there a good ‘how-to’ or ‘getting started’ guide for getting started using g++ and gdb?

Some background. Decent programmer, but so far I have done everything on Windows in Visual Studio.

I have a little experience using terminal to compile files (not much beyond a .h and 1 or 2 .cpp). But nothing beyond that.

Anyone know of a good primer on on how to get started coding on Linux?

Answer 1

Read some good books, notably Advanced Linux Programming and Advanced Unix Programming. Read also the advanced bash scripting guide and other documentation from Linux Documentation Project

Obviously, install some Linux distribution on your laptop (not in some VM, but on real disk partitions). If you have a debian like distribution, run aptitude build-dep gcc-4.6 gedit on it to get a lot of interesting developers packages.

Learn some command line skills. Learn to use the man command; after installing manpages and manpages-dev packages, type man man (use the space bar to “scroll text”, the q key to quit). Read also the intro(2) man page. When you forgot how to use a command like cp try cp --help.

Use a version control system like git, even for one person tiny projects.

Backup your files.

Read several relevant Wikipedia pages on Linux, kernels, syscalls, free software, X11, Posix, Unix

Try hard to use the command line. For instance, try to do everything on the command line for a week or more. Avoid using your desktop, and possibly your mouse. Learn to use emacs.

Read about builder programs like GNU make

Retrieve several free software from their source code (e.g. from sourceforge or freecode or github) and practice building and compiling them. Study their source code

Basic tips to start (if a command is not found, you need to install the package providing it) in command line (in a terminal).

• run emacs ; there is a tutorial menu; practice it for half an hour.

• edit a helloworld.c program (with a main calling some hello function)

• compile it with gcc -g -Wall helloworld.c -o helloworld; improve your code till no warnings are given. Always pass -Wall to gcc or g++ to get almost all warnings.

• run it with ./helloworld

• debug it with gdb ./helloworld, then

  1. use the help command
  2. use the b main command to add a breakpoint in main and likewise for your hello function.
  3. run it under gdb using r
  4. use bt to get a backtrace
  5. use p to print some variable
  6. use c to continue the execution of the debugged program.

• write a tiny Makefile to be able to build your helloworld program using make

• learn how to call make (with M-x compile) and gdb (with M-x gdb) from inside Emacs

Learn more about valgrind (to detect most memory leaks). Perhaps consider using Boehm’s GC in some of your applications.