Newbie stymied with C question

SBrogan · 09-25-2004, 07:27 PM

Ok gurus, heres a newbie question.

first let me say thanks for the help Ive recieved from good people of the realm

I am very interrested in learning C. I have been teaching myself. I was lead to the Linux comunity because I couldnt get a borland compiler to run on my win box, so the more I find out about Linux the more I love it.

Question: when Ive created a "new project" with Kdevelop (2.1.3) wrote the code, compiled, and debugged then how do I get an executable that I could send to my friend and he could run?

I get this file with like 31 files in it for a simple page long program that I wrote. All the explanations in the Kdevelop program seem to be geared at people who already know how to write code, and the book I have " C for Linux, in 21 days" only tells how to use a simple text editor, then compile from the command line. OK, so I forgo the beatiful IDE and try the old fashion way only to get several different files that wont execute.

Could someone point me to a good tutorial for K or a few pointers on how to get the program to execute.

(note; it appears the program is a success and debugs properly)

Samsara · 09-25-2004, 07:33 PM

When compiling from the command line (i.e. gcc sourcefile.c), you get a file a.out which is executable.

You could always send your friend the code...

HTH,

Samsara

itsme86 · 09-25-2004, 09:45 PM

Teaching C and teaching someone about a specific IDE are usually 2 entirely different beasts. There's at least a hundred different IDEs out there so teaching both at the same time would be a tremendous amount of time.

I would suggest getting familiar with C programs (and components thereof) before learning how to use an IDE. Jump into the command line and fire up your favorite text editor. Type out the C program and save the file. Back at the command line type gcc -Wall myprog.c -o myprog assuming your C program is stored in a file called myprog.c and you want the final executable to be called myprog.

Here's a really simple thing to try:

Code:

itsme@dreams:~/C$ cat > hello.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
  printf("Hello, world!\n");
  return 0;
}
^D
itsme@dreams:~/C$ cat hello.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
  printf("Hello, world!\n");
  return 0;
}
itsme@dreams:~/C$ gcc -Wall hello.c -o hello
itsme@dreams:~/C$ ./hello
Hello, world!
itsme@dreams:~/C$ ls -l hello
-rwxr-xr-x    1 itsme    users       13252 Sep 25 19:43 hello*
itsme@dreams:~/C$

That final hello file would be the finished program you can send to your friend. All the bold stuff is stuff you should type yourself. The ^D is the key combination CTRL-d which represents End Of File (EOF) in Linux.

tonyfreeman · 09-25-2004, 09:48 PM

You only have one *.c file? Then a simple compile would be something like this:

Code:

gcc my_program.c

This will give you an "a.out" file ... which is your executable. You could also pass the "-o" option and give your own file name:

Code:

gcc my_program.c -o my_program

This will give you a "my_program" file ... which is your executable.

--Tony