Chapter 18. Extending the Power of Darwin

After the previous chapter, we hope you are at least somewhat comfortable working at the command line. In this chapter, we'll move on and show how to extend the power of Darwin by covering the following:

  • An introduction to shell scripting

  • An overview of Perl, Python, and Ruby, which are three powerful scripting languages included with Snow Leopard

  • How to find and install a range of additional applications using MacPorts and Fink

  • How to custom-compile a Darwin application from the source code

Getting Started with Shell Scripting

Shell scripting has been a staple in Unix since the first shell was launched. In its most basic form, a shell script allows you to add a series of shell commands to a file so that these ...

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