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

Introducing Files

In Linux, everything is – or can be represented as – a file. Files are organized into a filesystem, which is just a hierarchy of files and directories (directories are just a special kind of file). As a developer, just about everything you do on a Linux system will require knowledge about files: writing and copying source code, building Docker images, application logging, configuring dependencies, and more.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the details of files in Linux. You’ll learn about the difference between plaintext files and binary files, which are the two most common types of file content you’ll be working with. We’ll show you how those are laid out and organized into a filesystem “tree” in Linux, before diving into the practical commands you’ll need to create, modify, move, and edit files. Then we’ll complete our tour of the basics with a practical introduction to file editing, using the...