Summary

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Tip:  
If you will be writing C code, the time that you spend learning how to use gdb and some of the other tools mentioned in this chapter will be more than worth the eventual time-saving that you will gain.

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This chapter introduces the GNU C compiler and many of the options that you will typically use when you compile C code. It also introduces the concepts behind debugging code with the GNU debugger and illustrates the usefulness of some of the other C utility programs that are included on the Linux CD-ROM.

The next chapter will discuss many of the same topics, but with a focus on C++ development rather than C development. Instead of moving to C++, you can go to other chapters:

•  Perl, a handy scripting language is discussed in Chapter 28, “Perl.”

•  Tcl and Tk, useful for macros, is discussed in Chapter 29, “Introduction to Tcl and Tk.”

•  The compilers available for Linux is discussed in Chapter 30, “Other Compilers.”

•  Smalltalk is discussed in Chapter 31, “Smalltalk/X.”