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

Editing files

Whether it’s updating configuration files, creating new Linux services, or taking notes during a troubleshooting session, your work on Linux is occasionally going to require you to edit files on the command line. We’re going to cover command-line file editing in detail in Chapter 6, Editing Files on the Command Line, but we’ll give you a very brief overview here.

If you’re limited to a command-line-only environment, there are a few CLI text editors you might use:

  • nano: Almost always installed or available; easy to use
  • vi: Installed almost everywhere; takes a bit of getting used to
  • vim: Easy to install everywhere; more full-featured than vi

If any of these are not installed, you can install them via your package manager. For example, if you’re using Ubuntu Linux, that’ll be a command like sudo apt-get install nano (or substitute nano for vim). We’ll dive deeper into package management...