Iv'e been a linux user for about two years now and ive learned a little bit about programing...........but I want to learn more.

Specificaly how the linux source code works. But I cant figure out where to get the sources from! Iv'e visited various repositoriesand looked around but I havnt seen any files ending in .src. Is there another extension used for downloading the sources of various distros?

Any information would be helpful. Point me the way of knowledge, please guys.


thanks

Look for files that end in .c or .cpp. Those are C/C++ source code files. There isn't really a "Linux" source code. The Linux kernel is written in C, but there's hundreds of different languages and each have their own source code.

if you are searching for the linux kernel source then you should have a look at http://www.kernel.org

Many users download and install software from 'tarballs'. These files are archived directories of source code. The extension is usually tar.gz or .tgz. Any project in the sourceforge website will also have source code available. Also, you could install a source package. These are rpm packages that contain the sourcecode. Look for files the end in .src.rpm. This is the standard suffix for source RPM packages.
If you visit the ftp site where you can download your linux distribution, there will be a directory that has nothing but source code. Because the GPL license requires one to release the source code, this is what open source is all about, you won't have any problem locating source code for linux.

One source package you might want to look at is the core-utils package. This contains many ubiquitous programs such as 'echo' and 'cat'. The Unix V7 echo program is only 23 lines long, including the blank lines.

You didn't ask for this, but I would highly recommend the book 'Linux Programming by Example: The Fundamentals' by Arnold Robbins

Wow!............Thanks guys........Ill head out to my journey now.

jschiwal, I wanna thank you for such a detailed post. It has helped more than you can imagine.



Ok...........i found some src.rpm files and downloaded then. Now how do I open them to have a look at the code?

just uncompress the files, if needed, fire up your favorite text editor and go for it.

how to uncompress those rpms