Category Archives: Tutoriale Linux
5 Essential Tools for Linux Development | Linux.com
Linux has become a mainstay for many sectors of work, play, and personal life. We depend upon it. With Linux, technology is expanding and evolving faster than anyone could have imagined. That means Linux development is also happening at an exponential rate. Because of this, more and more developers will be hopping on board the open source and Linux dev train in the immediate, near, and far-off future. For that, people will need tools. Fortunately, there are a ton of dev tools available for Linux; so many, in fact, that it can be a bit intimidating to figure out precisely what you need (especially if you’re coming from another platform).
To make that easier, I thought I’d help narrow down the selection a bit for you. But instead of saying you should use Tool X and Tool Y, I’m going to narrow it down to five categories and then offer up an example for each. Just remember, for most categories, there are several available options. And, with that said, let’s get started.
Containers
Let’s face it, in this day and age you need to be working with containers. Not only are they incredibly easy to deploy, they make for great development environments. If you regularly develop for a specific platform, why not do so by creating a container image that includes all of the tools you need to make the process quick and easy. With that image available, you can then develop and roll out numerous instances of whatever software or service you need.
Using containers for development couldn’t be easier than it is with Docker. The advantages of using containers (and Docker) are:
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Consistent development environment.
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You can trust it will “just work” upon deployment.
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Makes it easy to build across platforms.
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Docker images available for all types of development environments and languages.
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Deploying single containers or container clusters is simple.
Thanks to Docker Hub, you’ll find images for nearly any platform, development environment, server, service… just about anything you need. Using images from Docker Hub means you can skip over the creation of the development environment and go straight to work on developing your app, server, API, or service.
Docker is easily installable of most every Linux platform. For example: To install Docker on Ubuntu, you only have to open a terminal window and issue the command:
sudo apt-get install docker.io
With Docker installed, you’re ready to start pulling down specific images, developing, and deploying (Figure 1).
Version control system
If you’re working on a large project or with a team on a project, you’re going to need a version control system. Why? Because you need to keep track of your code, where your code is, and have an easy means of making commits and merging code from others. Without such a tool, your projects would be nearly impossible to manage. For Linux users, you cannot beat the ease of use and widespread deployment of Git and GitHub. If you’re new to their worlds, Git is the version control system that you install on your local machine and GitHub is the remote repository you use to upload (and then manage) your projects. Git can be installed on most Linux distributions. For example, on a Debian-based system, the install is as simple as:
sudo apt-get install git
Once installed, you are ready to start your journey with version control (Figure 2).
Github requires you to create an account. You can use it for free for non-commercial projects, or you can pay for commercial project housing (for more information check out the price matrix here).
Text editor
Let’s face it, developing on Linux would be a bit of a challenge without a text editor. Of course what a text editor is varies, depending upon who you ask. One person might say vim, emacs, or nano, whereas another might go full-on GUI with their editor. But since we’re talking development, we need a tool that can meet the needs of the modern day developer. And before I mention a couple of text editors, I will say this: Yes, I know that vim is a serious workhorse for serious developers and, if you know it well vim will meet and exceed all of your needs. However, getting up to speed enough that it won’t be in your way, can be a bit of a hurdle for some developers (especially those new to Linux). Considering my goal is to always help win over new users (and not just preach to an already devout choir), I’m taking the GUI route here.
As far as text editors are concerned, you cannot go wrong with the likes of Bluefish. Bluefish can be found in most standard repositories and features project support, multi-threaded support for remote files, search and replace, open files recursively, snippets sidebar, integrates with make, lint, weblint, xmllint, unlimited undo/redo, in-line spell checker, auto-recovery, full screen editing, syntax highlighting (Figure 3), support for numerous languages, and much more.
IDE
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a piece of software that includes a comprehensive set of tools that enable a one-stop-shop environment for developing. IDEs not only enable you to code your software, but document and build them as well. There are a number of IDEs for Linux, but one in particular is not only included in the standard repositories it is also very user-friendly and powerful. That tool in question is Geany. Geany features syntax highlighting, code folding, symbol name auto-completion, construct completion/snippets, auto-closing of XML and HTML tags, call tips, many supported filetypes, symbol lists, code navigation, build system to compile and execute your code, simple project management, and a built-in plugin system.
Geany can be easily installed on your system. For example, on a Debian-based distribution, issue the command:
sudo apt-get install geany
Once installed, you’re ready to start using this very powerful tool that includes a user-friendly interface (Figure 4) that has next to no learning curve.
diff tool
There will be times when you have to compare two files to find where they differ. This could be two different copies of what was the same file (only one compiles and the other doesn’t). When that happens, you don’t want to have to do that manually. Instead, you want to employ the power of tool like Meld. Meld is a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers. With Meld you can make short shrift out of discovering the differences between two files. Although you can use a command line diff tool, when efficiency is the name of the game, you can’t beat Meld.
Meld allows you to open a comparison between to files and it will highlight the differences between each. Meld also allows you to merge comparisons either from the right or the left (as the files are opened side by side – Figure 5).
Meld can be installed from most standard repositories. On a Debian-based system, the installation command is:
sudo apt-get install meld
Working with efficiency
These five tools not only enable you to get your work done, they help to make it quite a bit more efficient. Although there are a ton of developer tools available for Linux, you’re going to want to make sure you have one for each of the above categories (maybe even starting with the suggestions I’ve made).
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
A Linux Sysadmin’s Guide to Network Management, Troubleshooting and Debugging | Linux.com
A system administrator’s routine tasks include configuring, maintaining, troubleshooting, and managing servers and networks within data centers. There are numerous tools and utilities in Linux designed for the administrative purposes.
In this article, we will review some of the most used command-line tools and utilities for network management in Linux, under different categories. We will explain some common usage examples, which will make network management much easier in Linux.
Network Configuration, Troubleshooting and Debugging Tools
1. ifconfig Command
ifconfig is a command line interface tool for network interface configuration and also used to initialize an interfaces at system boot time. Once a server is up and running, it can be used to assign an IP Address to an interface and enable or disable the interface on demand.
It is also used to view the status IP Address, Hardware / MAC address, as well as MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size of the currently active interfaces. ifconfig is thus useful for debugging or performing system tuning.
Here is an example to display status of all active network interfaces.
$ ifconfig enp1s0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 28:d2:44:eb:bd:98 inet addr:192.168.0.103 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::8f0c:7825:8057:5eec/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:169854 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:125995 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:174146270 (174.1 MB) TX bytes:21062129 (21.0 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:15793 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15793 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 RX bytes:2898946 (2.8 MB) TX bytes:2898946 (2.8 MB)
To list all interfaces which are currently available, whether up or down, use the -a flag.
Read more at Tecmint
Three Graphical Clients for Git on Linux | Linux.com
Those that develop on Linux are likely familiar with Git. With good reason. Git is one of the most widely used and recognized version control systems on the planet. And for most, Git use tends to lean heavily on the terminal. After all, much of your development probably occurs at the command line, so why not interact with Git in the same manner?
In some instances, however, having a GUI tool to work with can make your workflow slightly more efficient (at least for those that tend to depend upon a GUI). To that end, what options do you have for Git GUI tools? Fortunately, we found some that are worthy of your time and (in some cases) money. I want to highlight three such Git clients that run on the Linux operating system. Out of these three, you should be able to find one that meets all of your needs.
I am going to assume you understand how Git and repositories like GitHub function, which I covered previously, so I won’t be taking the time for any how-tos with these tools. Instead, this will be an introduction, so you (the developer) know these tools are available for your development tasks.
A word of warning: Not all of these tools are free, and some are released under proprietary licenses. However, they all work quite well on the Linux platform and make interacting with GitHub a breeze.
With that said, let’s look at some outstanding Git GUIs.
SmartGit
SmartGit is a proprietary tool that’s free for non-commercial usage. If you plan on employing SmartGit in a commercial environment, the license cost is $99 USD per year for one license or $5.99 per month. There are other upgrades (such as Distributed Reviews and SmartSynchronize), which are both $15 USD per licence. You can download either the source or a .deb package for installation. I tested SmartGit on Ubuntu 18.04 and it worked without issue.
But why would you want to use SmartGit? There are plenty of reasons. First and foremost, SmartGit makes it incredibly easy to integrate with the likes of GitHub and Subversion servers. Instead of spending your valuable time attempting to configure the GUI to work with your remote accounts, SmartGit takes the pain out of that task. The SmartGit GUI (Figure 1) is also very well designed to be uncluttered and intuitive.
After installing SmartGit, I had it connected with my personal GitHub account in seconds. The default toolbar makes working with a repository, incredibly simple. Push, pull, check out, merge, add branches, cherry pick, revert, rebase, reset — all of Git’s most popular features are there to use. Outside of supporting most of the standard Git and GitHub functions/features, SmartGit is very stable. At least when using the tool on the Ubuntu desktop, you feel like you’re working with an application that was specifically designed and built for Linux.
SmartGit is probably one of the best tools that makes working with even advanced Git features easy enough for any level of user. To learn more about SmartGit, take a look at the extensive documentation.
GitKraken
GitKraken is another proprietary GUI tool that makes working with both Git and GitHub an experience you won’t regret. Where SmartGit has a very simplified UI, GitKraken has a beautifully designed interface that offers a bit more feature-wise at the ready. There is a free version of GitKraken available (and you can test the full-blown paid version with a 15 day trial period). After the the trial period ends, you can continue using the free version, but for non-commercial use only.
For those who want to get the most out of their development workflow, GitKraken might be the tool to choose. This particular take on the Git GUI features the likes of visual interactions, resizable commit graphs, drag and drop, seamless integration (with GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket), easy in-app tasks, in-app merge tools, fuzzy finder, gitflow support, 1-click undo & redo, keyboard shortcuts, file history & blame, submodules, light & dark themes, git hooks support, git LFS, and much more. But the one feature that many users will appreciate the most is the incredibly well-designed interface (Figure 2).
Outside of the amazing interface, one of the things that sets GitKraken above the rest of the competition is how easy it makes working with multiple remote repositories and multiple profiles. The one caveat to using GitKraken (besides it being proprietary) is the cost. If you’re looking at using GitKraken for commercial use, the license costs are:
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$49 per user per year for individual
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$39 per user per year for 10+ users
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$29 per user per year for 100+ users
The Pro accounts allow you to use both the Git Client and the Glo Boards (which is the GitKraken project management tool) commercially. The Glo Boards are an especially interesting feature as they allow you to sync your Glo Board to GitHub Issues. Glo Boards are sharable and include search & filters, issue tracking, markdown support, file attachments, @mentions, card checklists, and more. All of this can be accessed from within the GitKraken GUI.
GitKraken is available for Linux as either an installable .deb file, or source.
Git Cola
Git Cola is our free, open source entry in the list. Unlike both GitKraken and Smart Git, Git Cola is a pretty bare bones, no-nonsense Git client. Git Cola is written in Python with a GTK interface, so no matter what distribution and desktop combination you use, it should integrate seamlessly. And because it’s open source, you should find it in your distribution’s package manager. So installation is nothing more than a matter of opening your distribution’s app store, searching for “Git Cola” and installing. You can also install from the command line like so:
sudo apt install git-cola
Or:
sudo dnf install git-cola
The Git Cola interface is pretty simple (Figure 3). In fact, you won’t find much in the way of too many bells and whistles, as Git Cola is all about the basics.
Because of Git Cola’s return to basics, there will be times when you must interface with the terminal. However, for many Linux users this won’t be a deal breaker (as most are developing within the terminal anyway). Git Cola does include features like:
Although Git Cola does support connecting to remote repositories, the integration to the likes of Github isn’t nearly as intuitive as it is on either GitKraken or SmartGit. But if you’re doing most of your work locally, Git Cola is an outstanding tool that won’t get in between you and Git.
Git Cola also comes with an advanced (Directed Acyclic Graph) DAG visualizer, called Git Dag. This tool allows you to get a visual representation of your branches. You start Git Dag either separately from Git Cola or within Git Cola from the View > DAG menu entry. Git DAG is a very powerful tool, which helps to make Git Cola one of the top open source Git GUIs on the market.
There’s more where that came from
There are plenty more Git GUI tools available. However, from these three tools you can do some serious work. Whether you’re looking for a tool with all the bells and whistles (regardless of license) or if you’re a strict GPL user, one of these should fit the bill.
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
Linux history Command Tutorial for Beginners (8 Examples) | Linux.com
If your work involves running tools and scripts on the Linux command line, I am sure there are a lot of commands you would be running each day. Those new to the command line should know there exists a tool – dubbed history – that gives you a list of commands you’ve executed earlier.
In this tutorial, we will discuss the basics of the history command using some easy to understand examples. But before we do that, it’s worth mentioning that all examples here have been tested on an Ubuntu 16.04LTS machine.
Linux history command
If you know how to effectively utilize your command line history, you can save a lot of time on daily basis. Following are some Q&A-styled examples that should give you a good idea on how you can use the history command to your benefit.
Read more at HowtoForge
An Introduction to Using Git | Linux.com
If you’re a developer, then you know your way around development tools. You’ve spent years studying one or more programming languages and have perfected your skills. You can develop with GUI tools or from the command line. On your own, nothing can stop you. You code as if your mind and your fingers are one to create elegant, perfectly commented, source for an app you know will take the world by storm.
But what happens when you’re tasked with collaborating on a project? Or what about when that app you’ve developed becomes bigger than just you? What’s the next step? If you want to successfully collaborate with other developers, you’ll want to make use of a distributed version control system. With such a system, collaborating on a project becomes incredibly efficient and reliable. One such system is Git. Along with Git comes a handy repository called GitHub, where you can house your projects, such that a team can check out and check in code.
I will walk you through the very basics of getting Git up and running and using it with GitHub, so the development on your game-changing app can be taken to the next level. I’ll be demonstrating on Ubuntu 18.04, so if your distribution of choice is different, you’ll only need to modify the Git install commands to suit your distribution’s package manager.
Git and GitHub
The first thing to do is create a free GitHub account. Head over to the GitHub signup page and fill out the necessary information. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to move on to installing Git (you can actually do these two steps in any order).
Installing Git is simple. Open up a terminal window and issue the command:
sudo apt install git-all
This will include a rather large number of dependencies, but you’ll wind up with everything you need to work with Git and GitHub.
On a side note: I use Git quite a bit to download source for application installation. There are times when a piece of software isn’t available via the built-in package manager. Instead of downloading the source files from a third-party location, I’ll often go the project’s Git page and clone the package like so:
git clone ADDRESS
Where ADDRESS is the URL given on the software’s Git page.
Doing this most always ensures I am installing the latest release of a package.
Create a local repository and add a file
The next step is to create a local repository on your system (we’ll call it newproject and house it in ~/). Open up a terminal window and issue the commands:
cd ~/ mkdir newproject cd newproject
Now we must initialize the repository. In the ~/newproject folder, issue the command git init. When the command completes, you should see that the empty Git repository has been created (Figure 1).
Next we need to add a file to the project. From within the root folder (~/newproject) issue the command:
touch readme.txt
You will now have an empty file in your repository. Issue the command git status to verify that Git is aware of the new file (Figure 2).
Even though Git is aware of the file, it hasn’t actually been added to the project. To do that, issue the command:
git add readme.txt
Once you’ve done that, issue the git status command again to see that readme.txt is now considered a new file in the project (Figure 3).
Your first commit
With the new file in the staging environment, you are now ready to create your first commit. What is a commit? Easy: A commit is a record of the files you’ve changed within the project. Creating the commit is actually quite simple. It is important, however, that you include a descriptive message for the commit. By doing this, you are adding notes about what the commit contains (such as what changes you’ve made to the file). Before we do this, however, we have to inform Git who we are. To do this, issue the command:
git config --global user.email EMAIL git config --global user.name “FULL NAME”
Where EMAIL is your email address and FULL NAME is your name.
Now we can create the commit by issuing the command:
git commit -m “Descriptive Message”
Where Descriptive Message is your message about the changes within the commit. For example, since this is the first commit for the readme.txt file, the commit could be:
git commit -m “First draft of readme.txt file”
You should see output indicating that 1 file has changed and a new mode was created for readme.txt (Figure 4).
Create a branch and push it to GitHub
Branches are important, as they allow you to move between project states. Let’s say you want to create a new feature for your game-changing app. To do that, create a new branch. Once you’ve completed work on the feature you can merge this feature from the branch to the master branch. To create the new branch, issue the command:
git checkout -b BRANCH
where BRANCH is the name of the new branch. Once the command completes, issue the command git branch to see that it has been created (Figure 5).
Next we need to create a repository on GitHub. If you log into your GitHub account, click the New Repository button from your account main page. Fill out the necessary information and click Create repository (Figure 6).
After creating the repository, you will be presented with a URL to use for pushing our local repository. To do this, go back to the terminal window (still within ~/newproject) and issue the commands:
git remote add origin URL git push -u origin master
Where URL is the url for our new GitHub repository.
You will be prompted for your GitHub username and password. Once you successfully authenticate, the project will be pushed to your GitHub repository and you’re ready to go.
Pulling the project
Say your collaborators make changes to the code on the GitHub project and have merged those changes. You will then need to pull the project files to your local machine, so the files you have on your system match those on the remote account. To do this, issue the command (from within ~/newproject):
git pull origin master
The above command will pull down any new or changed files to your local repository.
The very basics
And that is the very basics of using Git from the command line to work with a project stored on GitHub. There is quite a bit more to learn, so I highly recommend you issue the commands man git, man git-push, and man git-pull to get a more in-depth understanding of what the git command can do.
Happy developing!
Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.
