Summary

This chapter has been a primer of sorts, to prepare you for all of those nasty compile issues that jump out at you when you begin a new project or port an old project on a new UNIX platform. The relatively standard compile options were covered to give you a quick start. You may find, however, that you still need to visit the vendor-specific options that were not discussed here. For example, HP has options that permit you to choose different instruction sets for the different PA-RISC platforms that are supported by the compiler.

You also learned (or reviewed) some tips on how to eliminate warning messages. This should enable you to keep the highest level of warnings enabled on your compiler and still accomplish tasks that the compiler might otherwise question.

Finally, you had an introduction to compiler feature test macros, which let you choose a standard to compile to. This treatment was by no means complete, since the other possibilities such as _GNU_SOURCE for Linux or _HPUX_SOURCE for HP were not tested. While these are not standards, they are often chosen to get the best combination of features for the specific platforms in question.

The next chapter will cover the subject of UNIX file system objects. For non-UNIX veterans, this is an essential foundation to build upon. Consequently, you are encouraged to absorb that chapter carefully. After an introduction to the various types of UNIX file system objects, the chapter will cover basic UNIX permissions as they affect the different objects. Then the core set of UNIX system calls as they affect the file system objects will be covered, giving you the core knowledge necessary for the remainder of this book.