John Calcote's articles

Chapter 5: Building shared libraries with Libtool

The person who invented the concept of shared libraries should be given a raise... and a bonus. The person who decided that shared library management and naming conventions should be left to the implementation should be flogged.

This opinion is the result of too much negative experience on my part with building shared libraries for multiple platforms without the aid of Libtool. The very existence of Libtool stands as a witness to the truth of this sentiment.

Libtool exists for one purpose only--to provide a standardized, abstract interface for developers desiring to create portable shared libraries. It abstracts both the shared library build process, and the programming interfaces used to dynamically load and access shared libraries at run time.

Chapter 4: Automatically writing makefiles with Automake

Most of the general complaints I've ever seen aimed at the Autotools are ultimately associated with Automake, in the final analysis. The reason for this is simple: Automake provides the highest level of abstraction over the build system. This high level of abstraction is both apparent, and actual. And yet a solid understanding of the inner workings of Automake can provide you with the one of the most satisfying auto-generated build system experiences, because you can feel comfortable using the features of Automake to their maximum potential, and extending it where your projects require.

Chapter 2: Project management and the GNU coding standards

In Chapter 1, I gave a brief overview of the Autotools and some of the resources that are currently available to help reduce the learning curve. In this chapter, we're going to step back a little and examine project organization techniques that are applicable to all projects, not just those whose build system is managed by the Autotools.

Chapter 1: A brief introduction to the GNU Autotools

I'm going to make a rather broad and sweeping statement here: If you're writing free or open source software targeting Unix or Linux systems, then you should be using the GNU Autotools. I'm sure I sound a bit biased, but I'm not. And I shouldn't be, given the number of long nights I've spent working around what appeared to be shortcomings in the Autotools system. Normally, I would have been angry enough to toss the entire project out the window and write a good hand-coded makefile and configure script.

Chapter 7: A catalog of reusable solutions

This chapter started out as a catalog of reusable solutions--canned macros, if you will. But as I finished chapter after chapter preceeding this one, it became clear to me that I really needed to broaden my definition of a "canned solution". Instead of just cataloging interesting macros here (which has been done before anyway), this chapter lists several unrelated, but important tips for creating great projects in general. Some of these are related to the GNU Autotools, but others are merely good programming practice with respect to open source and free software projects.

Chapter 6: FLAIM: an Autotools example

In this book, I've taken you on a whirlwind tour of the main features of Autoconf, Automake and Libtool. I believe I've explained them in a manner that was not only simple to digest, but also to retain--especially if you had the time and inclination to follow my lead with your own copies of the examples. I've always believed that no form of learning comes anywhere close to the learning that happens while doing.

This chapter has downloads!

In this chapter, I'll continue this learning-by-doing pattern by converting an existing open source project to use the GNU Autotools.

OpenXDAS

No one would argue that software auditing is not an important feature of mission critical applications. If a software based process is critical to the life of your company, then so is the security and access control surrounding resources managed by that software based process. Auditing is the way you track who did what to what and when it happened. Lately, however, the software industry has been lackadaisical at best regarding auditing. Off the shelf software developers either care about auditing, or they don’t.

Configuring a Linux home internet gateway

My family is hooked on Windows. I’ve thought about trying to coerce them into switching to GNU/Linux, but the very thought of what I’d have to put up with for the next year just makes my head ache. I’m not talking about software maintenance issues. I’m talking about trying to defend my position time and time again as they complain that they can’t run their favorite games or applications. Telling them to change their favorites is like spitting into the wind—it’s sort of masochistic.

Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

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Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

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