Development Environment¶
Windows and MacOS¶
For consistent learning, every code snippet will refer to a clearly defined Linux distribution. We have chosen Manjaro.
In our experience, Windows operating systems tend to introduce a major overhead to the learning process. Hence, we will provide instructions for using a Linux distribution inside a virtual machine. But please note that it is possible to do everything in Windows as well.
- Download and install VirtualBox for Windows hosts
- Download an ISO for Manjaro Gnome (or another Linux distribution of your choice)
- Initialize new virtual machine for a 64bit Arch-Linux
- Run the ISO of Manjaro in the new virtual machine and install it
- Shutdown the virtual machine and remove the ISO
- Restart the virtual machine
You should now have a working Linux system. From this point on, we will only work inside this virtual machine to develop and run the code.
Installing the Basic Tools¶
Typical system package managers in Linux distributions allow us to easily install needed software.
Make sure your Linux distribution is up-to-date.
sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm
The distributions comes with a default terminal. If you want to use a different terminal, like fish, install and configure it.
sudo pacman -S fish
chsh -s /usr/bin/fish <username>
Download the most common C++ compilers, like GCC, Clang and Intel.
sudo pacman -S gcc clang
Download the most common build systems for other libraries.
sudo pacman -S make cmake
Download and install build2
Make sure the version control system git is installed and configured.
sudo pacman -S git
git config --global user.name <username>
git config --global user.email <email>
Choose an editor for your future projects and install it. Here, we will use Sublime Text. Instructions can be found here. Make sure to choose the pacman-branch and the stable version.
Afterwards, configure your editor on your own preferences. For Sublime Text, we provide this default.