Real World Instrumentation with Python

C Development Tools

As with Python, you will need a text editor or IDE of some sort for entering and editing C source code.

Whereas Python handles the chores involved with keeping the various packages and modules up-to-date dynamically at runtime and provides capabilities like introspection as built-in functionality, a C program must be compiled and linked from its component parts as a separate step in the development process.

Also, C does not support the ability to dynamically examine a running program, nor does it output messages stating what modules are being loaded (unless the programmer explicitly writes this functionality into the code). The end product for a C program is a binary executable object, so debugging requires a specialized tool that is capable of reading the various headers and symbol tables found in binary objects and matching these to the original source code. If you want visibility into the compiled code, it must be compiled with debugging enabled. This generates a larger object file because it includes various symbol tables and other data for a debugger to use.

For a list of some of the editors that are available, see Chapter 3. As for IDE tools, the Eclipse IDE offers a plug-in for C as well as one for Python, and of course Microsoft’s Visual Studio supports C and C++ right out of the box.

For C on Linux- and Unix-like systems, the classic GNU debugger, gdb, is supplied with most gcc distributions. If your system has gcc, the odds are very good that gdb is also ...