97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

Chapter 43. Know How to Use Command-Line Tools

Carroll Robinson

TODAY, MANY SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS are packaged in the form of integrated development environments (IDEs). Microsoft’s Visual Studio and the open source Eclipse are two popular examples, though there are many others. There is a lot to like about IDEs. Not only are they easy to use, but they also relieve the programmer of thinking about a lot of little details involving the build process.

Ease of use, however, has its downside. Typically, when a tool is easy to use, it’s because the tool is making decisions for you and doing a lot of things automatically, behind the scenes. Thus, if an IDE is the only programming environment that you ever use, you may never fully understand what your tools are actually doing. You click a button, some magic occurs, and an executable file appears in the project folder.

By working with command-line build tools, you will learn a lot more about what the tools are doing when your project is being built. Writing your own make files will help you to understand all of the steps (compiling, assembling, linking, etc.) that go into building an executable file. Experimenting with the many command-line options for these tools is a valuable educational experience as well. To get started with using command-line build tools, you can use open source command-line tools such as GCC, or you can use ...