Developing Programmers .com

Autotools are the set of GNU tools that configure their source packages for a particular computer system. If you have ever compiled a program using “configure” followed by “make” commands then chances are you have already used the output of Autotools.

This tutorial runs you through the basics of how to use Autotools.

This being the last Thursday before Christmas, it’s time to slack off a little. So I’m writing about a program that does pretty diagrams of “mind maps” that you can play with on your last day at work. It’ll be fun and might even be productive.

This tutorial aims to teach you how to use the CVSTrac and Trac tools. I assume an administrator has already set one or both of them up for you and that you just need to get comfortable with the tools themselves. The tutorial should also be useful for people trying to decide whether to use one of these systems, but I do not cover how to set them up or administrate them.

We all know we should document our code. But how much documentation is enough? This article explores three main kinds of documentation for programmers and suggests tools for producing API documentation automatically.

We all know that we “should” write tests for each new feature we add to ensure that the feature works correctly. At work we don’t have a formal testing process so I use a trivial shell script to run a series of tests for me.