How to learn to program under BSD?

[Sunnz]

I mean like, writing code for drivers, kernel, pf, something closely related to the BSD development.

It is pretty much a given that one must know C, but what's the next step?

I kind of picked up C at school and writing my little tools for my own use... but the whole Unix system calls and the kernel stuff are little mystery to me...

I am thinking of getting a book like Advanced Programming in The Unix Environment, download the -current source of a BSD OS and see if I can change things and make it run on a spare box.

What do you think? Are there any recommendation?

[DNAeon]

Originally Posted by Sunnz

I am thinking of getting a book like Advanced Programming in The Unix Environment, download the -current source of a BSD OS and see if I can change things and make it run on a spare box.

Of course the best way one could learn programming is to start programming

Yes, I think that getting a book for Unix programming is a great start to develop your skills - so go ahead and take one.

Meanwhile, here are some links for tutorials about Unix programming that you may give a look:

• http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/
• http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~milun/unix.programming.html
• http://beej.us/guide/

Good books about C that are worth reading:

• The C Programming Language - by K&R
• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment - by Richard Stevens (the one you mentioned in your post)
• TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 2 - The Implementation - by Richard Stevens
• TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1 - by Richard Stevens
• UNIX Network Programming Vol 1 - by Richard Stevens
• UNIX Network Programming Vol 2 - by Richard Stevens
• Teach Yourself C - by Herbert Schildt (a great book for C beginners)

Of course, there are a lot more books about C, UNIX and programming, but to be honest these are the books that I found most useful to me

Well, I wish you happy coding

[Sunnz]

Thanks for the recommendations, I actually brought K&R for school, used it for years.

And yea I do want to start writing code, it is just difficult to know where to start... well technically I have written very simple tools for myself, but as far as making code the OS goes, I haven't got anywhere yet.

[TerryP]

A good place to start with FreeBSD, is reading /usr/src.

The source tree is fairly well organized, you'll find most everything where you expect in the userland; kernel code resides in /usr/src/sys. I've personally found starting with the booting procedures and working up from there to a running system was fun, in regards to the kernel. Examining the code in /usr/src/usr.bin/ is actually what started me writing in C.


You might also like The Art of Unix Programming, by Eric Steven Raymond; for something more abstract, but you will want something like Richard Stevens APUE and the systems manual pages for actual code crunching though. (Sections 2,3, 4, and 9 especially).

[taylor_venable]

For FreeBSD-specific kernel programming, check out these books (both are excellent):

Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System

Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking

[Oliver_H]

>How to learn to program under BSD?

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/index.html

You could start e.g. with this document, read the others: http://www.freebsd.org/docs/books.html and you should of course follow current.