Professional Linux Programming

Richard Stones and Neil Matthew, Wrox Press. £43.99

28 Chapters and 4 Appendices in 1158 Pages.

Contents

    Chapters

        1    Application Design
        2    CVS
        3    Databases
        4    PostgreSQL Interfacing
        5    MySQL
        6    Tackling Bugs
        7    LDAP Directory Services
        8    GUI Programming with GTK+/GNOME
        9    GUI Building with Glade and GTK+/GNOME
        10  Flex and Bison
        11  Testing Tools
        12  Secure Programming
        13  GUI Programming with KDE/Qt
        14  Writing the DVD Store GUI Using KDE/Qt
        15  Python
        16  Creating Web Interfaces
        17  Embedding and Extending Python with C/C++
        18  Remote Procedure Calls
        19  Multimedia and Linux
        20  CORBA
        21  Implementing CORBA with ORBit
        22  Diskless Systems
        23  XML and libxml
        24  Beowulf Clusters
        25  Documentation
        26  Device Drivers
        27  Distributing the Application
        28  Internationalisation

    Appendices

        A  GTK+/GNOME Object Reference
        B  The DVD Store RPC Protocol Definition
        C  Open Source Licences
        D  Support, Errata, and P2P.Wrox.Com
 

    Synopsis

Quite obviously, this book is aimed at those wishing to write programs for their Linux system.   I haven't seen many programming books that are quite as good as this one is.   At the start of the book there is the question "Who is this book for ?".  It goes on to explain that experienced Linux progammers and aspiring developers would benefit from reading the words of wisdom that are between the covers.

There is a great wealth of information in this book which I had previously encountered as documents that were scattered all over the internet.  To see all that electronic debris crammed into a small book is something of a marvel.   The introduction gives plenty of examples and good reasons to live rather than jump off that cliff down the road because you just met an Emacs user.  And without being presumptuous, this is no exception - this is a fine book.

Application design at the front of the book is the part where development models are introduced.   CVS is explained next.  Most of the earlier chapters are about the sophisticated subject of database creation and management.  There's a lot of info in there.  Well worth a long read.  At chapter eight the long hard night came along.  This is where GUI programming is introduced with GTK+/GNOME.  There are a few intervening chapters about various things before the KDE/Qt GUI programming tools are introduced at chapter thirteen.  Creating web interfaces with PHP comes along next .  A good example of this is our own Phorum bulletin board.  This leads into embedding and extending Python with C and C++ which also refers to a previous chapter on Python.

One of the more useful features of this particular volume is the section on CORBA and implementing CORBA at chapters twenty and twenty-one.  The most invaluable information in the book for me was the short section on Beowulf and the part about internationalisation would also seem to be one of the best.  The internationalisation of Linux is very much a part of the work that Stephen Turnbull has undertaken over the years.  You can see more about Stephen Turnbull on our feature pages.

If you were a highly religious person before reading this book then you might need to be prepared for a sea change.  It is quite a good bit more entertaining than the bible ever will be.  It is written by something like fifteen different authors.  If you find a mistake then we'll all be amazed.
 

Review by Richard Ibbotson