Unix: Building, Installing and Running Software

Prerequisites

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

It is common for a student or researcher to find a piece of software or to have one thrust upon them by a supervisor which they must then build, install and use. It is a myth that any of this requires system privilege. This course demonstrates the building, installation and use of typical software ranging from trivially easy examples (the "configure, make, install" scheme) through to the evils of badly written Makefiles. Common errors and what they mean will be covered and by the end of the course the student should be able to manage their own software without needing to pester their system administrator.

• All current University members (departments and colleges)
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available

• Those attending should be able to use a plain text editor (e.g. emacs, gedit, vi) on a Unix system as might be obtained from the Emacs or Vi introductory courses.
• A basic knowledge of the Unix command line as might be gleaned from the Unix: Introduction to the Command Line Interface (Self-paced) course is also required.

• Software layout
• Environment variables
• Unpacking source distributions
• configure scripts
• Building configured software with make
• Installing configured software
• Dependencies between packages
• The pkg-config command

• Phases of building an executable
• Basic use of make
• Configuring make with Makefiles
• Setting options in Makefiles
• Adding rules to Makefiles
• Automatic macros
• Static macros
• Standard targets

• A real-world, "ugly" example
• Multi-directory builds and recursive make

Presentation/demonstration with practicals.

MCS Linux

Three half day sessions

• C++: Programming in Modern C++
• PHP: Introduction to Programming the Hypertext Preprocessor
• Programming Concepts: Introduction for Absolute Beginners
• Python 3: Advanced Topics (Self-paced)
• Python 3: Introduction for Absolute Beginners
• Python 3: Introduction for Those with Programming Experience
• Unix: Introduction to the Command Line Interface (Self-paced)
• Unix: Simple Shell Scripting for Scientists

• Research
• Scientific Computing
• Unix (including Linux) Systems & Use