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

The filesystem tree

The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) describes the conventional directory layout of Unix-like systems. Linux conforms to this standard, essentially making it “the official folder structure of Linux.” The FHS is a standardized tree structure where every file and directory stems from the root (a directory simply named “/"). This hierarchy is crucial: although there’s a place for end-users to go wild with their own directory structure, every single subdirectory inside of / (the root directory) has a specific purpose.

The basic layout of this filesystem hierarchy doesn’t take long to learn, and by investing a few minutes now, you’ll develop an intuition for where things go – whether they’re application binaries, logs, data files, or external devices that your code needs access to. In other words, it eases both development and troubleshooting: when you know where things should be, you spend less time...