HOWTO: Write programs

Puppy is a tiny distribution, but there is a wide choice of programming languages. The default live-CD is not setup for compiling C or C++ programs, however there is an add-on file named 'devx_xxx.sfs' (where 'xxx' is the Puppy version number, for example '401' for version 4.01) that turns Puppy into a complete C/C++ compiling environment (FreeBASIC compiler also). Without devx_xxx.sfs, the live-CD already has Ash/Bash and Perl scripting languages. This page has a summary of the programming options in Puppy...

Ash/Bash scripts

A language that is all ready for action in Puppy is command-shell scripting. Unix and Linux shell command-scripting has been around for ages and is going to be around for a long time to come. What I mean by the "command shell" is the user interface that you use when at the commandline. When you are running X, the commandline will be in a terminal window, but you can also exit from X and be back at a commandline.

The actual program that is running and doing the interacting with you is known as the command-shell, and for Linux it is usually what is known as the Bash shell. In Puppy, you have a choice of two shells, Bash or Ash.
Note that when a terminal window is opened in X, Bash is running. If you exit from X to the commandline, Ash is running. You can explicitly choose either Bash or Ash in a script by placing "#!/bin/bash" or "#!/bin/sh" (or "#!/bin/ash") on the first line.

A shell script is an executable program, except that it is a text file and does not have to be compiled. Shell scripts can be very sophisticated, and there are lots of them in Puppy.

This page is not a tutorial on how to program with Ash/Bash scripts --there are plenty of books on the subject and also on the Internet. There are a couple of Bash scripting HOWTOs to be found here:

"Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide": http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html
"Bash Programming - Introduction HOWTO": http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html

To write a Ash/Bash script, all you need is a text editor, and Puppy has two console editors, e3 and MP, and two GUI editors, Geany and Leafpad. Geany and MP are particularly interesting as they have color syntax highlighting for Bash/Ash scripts.

Have fun, write a script for Puppy!

Here is an overview of tools to aid with scripting, with links to online docs:

e3, mp, Geany, Leafpad	Text editors
Ash , Bash	Command shells used in Puppy
BusyBox	A suite of basic Unix/Linux console applications, can be used in scripts. Puppy uses many of these, although in many cases the "full" program is used as the Busybox applet lacks the required functionality.
Xdialog	A GTK GUI frontend for scripts
xmessage	A very basic X11 GUI dialog frontend for scripts
xclip	A console application for cut-to and paste-from the clipboard or X-selections (primary or secondary). Can be used in scripts.
gtkdialog3	This is yet another alternative to xmessage and Xdialog. Gtkdialog is a GTK2 application and reads an XML file that describes the dialog format and user interaction, allowing incredible sophisticated GUIs. I think that gtkdialog is the pick of the bunch! Note that Puppy currently has two versions of gtkdialog, named gtkdialog2 and gtkdialog3 -- it is preferred that you use the latter as this will eventually be the only one in Puppy -- in other words, always execute the binary "gtkdialog3". Note, the user manual for gtkdialog3 is rudimentary, but the 'devx' module has many example programs at /usr/share/doc/gtkdialog3/examples.

Here are some scripts used in Puppy:
/usr/sbin/pmount
/usr/sbin/timezone-set

C/C++ programming

All of the tools for compiling C/C++ applications are to be found in an add-on file named devx_xxx.sfs. This is what we call an SFS file, and you can read an overview of these online in this page: http://puppylinux.com/development/package-management.htm

To use this file is very simple. Download it from the Internet (it is about 70M) and save to /mnt/home (the same place as the "pup_save.2fs" file).

Or, if you have installed Puppy to hard drive with what we call a "full" installation (Puppy occupying his own partition, no ramdisk), then download the devx_xxx.sfs file ...then some manual steps are required, see here: http://www.puppylinux.com/hard-puppy.htm.

After downloading devx_xxx.sfs and placing it in the right place, reboot Puppy, and that's it, you're ready to go.
All of the normal compiling tools work, such as "configure" and "make".

Note, it is necessary that the PC have either a Linux swap partition and/or a lot of RAM. C/C++ compiling needs a lot of temporary space.

If you compile a package and would like to make it available for others to use, it is very easy to create a PET package -- read this: http://www.puppylinux.com/development/createpet.htm

If you want to write GTK applications, the 'devx' file also has 'glade-3'. This is a visual GUI-builder. Find out more about Glade here: http://glade.gnome.org/ The 'glade-3' program generates an XML file, and Puppy has 'libglade', a library that an application uses to read the XML file and generate the GUI.

Note, gtkdialog3 is also able to load a Glade XML file. See the gtkdialog3 examples at /usr/share/doc/gtkdialog/examples, provided by the 'devx' file. So, even a Bash script can utilise Glade.

FreeBASIC programming

If you want the simplicity of Basic and the efficiency of a compiler, then take a look at FreeBASIC. Unlike some other free compilers (such as FreePascal), FreeBASIC generates very small executables, on a par with those generated by C programming. You can also use all the shared libraries in Puppy, including the GTK libraries -- and the the FreeBASIC package includes all the GTK tutorial examples taken from the online tutorial at www.gtk.org.

FreeBASIC is available in the 'devx' module, so install that as described above, and you're in business!

After installing the 'devx' module, the FreeBASIC examples are to be found at /usr/share/doc/freebasic. Binaries and include files are to be found in /usr/share/freebasic. The compiler 'fbc' is in the path at /usr/bin/fbc.

All documentation for FreeBASIC is to be found online at: http://freebasic.net/, however the 'devx' module also has it as the User Manual as a CHM file (Microsoft Help format) and recent releases of Puppy have 'ChmSee', a reader for this file-format. The CHM help file is to be found at /usr/share/doc/freebasic.

The best editor for writing FreeBASIC programs is Geany (the default text editor in Puppy), as it has color syntax highlighting.

FreeBASIC can also use Glade XML files. There is an application 'glade2bas' that will generate a skeleton FreeBASIC application for a particular Glade XML file. A HOWTO is at /usr/share/doc/freebasic/howto_glade_freebasic.pdf. This is all provided in the 'devx' file.