Software Development Tools

The aim of this course is to give you a sound basic knowledge of the most important tools available under the Unix operating system. This is particularly important as many of the courses which you will undertake require use of Unix, and appropriate use of the tools provided will make your practical work much easier to complete.

Although the focus of this course is on Unix tools, you should be aware that many of the tools that you will use are generic. That is, tools of very similar functionality, though most likely with a different interface, exist under other operating systems. Hence Unix-specific knowledge gained in this course can be transferred later to other operating environments.

This course is very practical in nature. Students are expected to learn by working on their own. A personal Linux system is mandatory for external students and highly recommended for internal students.

Course Mailing List

A mailing list has been created for this course. It is expected that all students taking this course will register their email address with the mailing list.

The mailing list is a way for you to communicate with each other and the examiner. It should be used as a forum for the course.

All important announcements will be made on the mailing list.

Debian GNU/Linux

In this course the supported flavour of Unix is Debian GNU/Linux Release 4.0 "Etch". The Department of Mathematics and Computing produces a DVD-ROM Set that contains the supported flavour of Unix ready for installation. This DVD-ROM set can be purchased from the USQ Bookshop

Though the supported version of Unix in this course is Debian GNU/Linux all other flavours of Unix should be suitable for this course provided All the software packages required for this course have been installed - in particular TeX.