The Linux Development Platform

Software development is a complicated process. It requires careful planning and execution to meet the goals. Sometimes a developer must react quickly and aggressively to meet ever-changing market demands. Maintaining software quality hinders fast-paced software development, as many testing cycles are necessary to ensure quality products.

This chapter provides an introduction to the software development process. As you will learn, there are many stages of any software development project. A commercial software product is usually derived from market demands. Sales and marketing people have first-hand knowledge of their customers’ requirements. Based upon these market requirements, senior software developers create an architecture for the products along with functional and design specifications. Then the development process starts. After the initial development phase, software testing begins, and many times it is done in parallel with the development process. Documentation is also part of the development process because a product cannot be brought to market without manuals. Once development and testing are done, the software is released and the support cycle begins. This phase may include bug fixes and new releases.

After reading this chapter, you should understand how software development is done and the components of a software development system. At the end of the chapter, you will find an introduction to Linux Standard Base. This chapter is not specific to a particular hardware platform or tools. You will start learning about the components of an actual software development platform in the next chapter.