Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

By : David Cohen, Christian Sturm
5 (2)
Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

5 (2)
By: David Cohen, Christian Sturm

Overview of this book

Developers are always looking to raise their game to the next level, yet most are completely lost when it comes to the Linux command line. This book is the bridge that will take you to the next level in your software development career. Most of the skills in the book can be immediately put to work to make you a more efficient developer. It’s written specifically for software engineers, not Linux system administrators, so each chapter will equip you with just enough theory to understand what you’re doing before diving into practical commands that you can use in your day-to-day work as a software developer. As you work through the book, you’ll quickly absorb the basics of how Linux works while you get comfortable moving around the command line. Once you’ve got the core skills, you’ll see how to apply them in different contexts that you’ll come across as a software developer: building and working with Docker images, automating boring build tasks with shell scripts, and troubleshooting issues in production environments. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to use Linux and the command line comfortably and apply your newfound skills in your day-to-day work to save time, troubleshoot issues, and be the command-line wizard that your team turns to.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
18
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19
Index

How containers work as packages

Docker became standard tooling to package up software when the goal is to include a system that is known to be a working setup. A Docker container typically contains both the software you want to run as well as a whole, though frequently trimmed down, Linux system as its execution environment. This execution environment provides libraries and tools, as well as some other things, like basic system configuration, so that it can function as a standalone entity, independent of the system running the container. The primary goal is to make sure that the application can successfully be run on the developer’s machine, production and test environments, and elsewhere, without having to take care of details, such as the operating system versions, installed libraries.

It is important to keep in mind that the operating system and libraries don’t disappear. Bugs in libraries may still exist and any packaged dependencies should be updated for security...