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Unix on HPPS

Many of the practical problems will require access to a Unix shell and common Unix tools. This page describes how to do so on your own machines.

Linux

If you run Linux, then everything you need will be easily available in your distribution's package manager, or it may even be installed already. Congratulations!

Here is a conservative list of the software you'll need for this course:

  • apt-get is the general package manager for your Debian/Ubuntu. You can use it to install the following packages.
  • GCC and Binutils. On Debian/Ubuntu you get these with the build-essential package. On Arch Linux/Antergos this is called base-devel.
  • GDB. In most package managers this is called gdb. You can also use LLDB if you wish.
  • make. The build tool. You also get this with the build-essential package.

Further, the following tools are recommended:

  • Valgrind for detecting memory errors in C programs. Available as valgrind in most package managers.

Windows

You will need to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Click here for Microsoft's own instructions.

After this, follow the Linux instruction given above.

macOS

macOS is a Unix system, but the necessary tools are not quite as accessible as on Linux.

Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager (similar to apt on Linux) that contain ports of many Unix programs. When you get a new Mac, this should be the first program to install, as it is the most useful.

You can install most things you need through Homebrew.

Use LLDB instead of GDB

GDB (a C debugger) is tricky to get working on macOS. Instead, you should use LLDB (lldb), which has equivalent functionality for our purposes, and almost the same commands. See this GDB to LLDB command map, and note that you likely need only a small fraction of these commands for HPPS.

Valgrind

The valgrind tool unfortunately does not work on macOS, and we know of no fix or substitute. Since this is not a requirement, merely a very useful tool, the most pragmatic workaround is to ensure that each group has at least one group member with a non-macOS system.