Organization of This Book (Mac OS X for Unix Geeks)

0.2. Organization of This Book

This book is divided into four parts. Part I helps you map your current Unix knowledge to the world of Mac OS X. Part II discusses compiling, linking, and packaging applications, and Part III takes you into the world of the Darwin kernel and the X Window System. Part IV provides useful reference information.

Here's a brief overview of what's in the book:

Part I

This part of the book orients you to Mac OS X's unique way of expressing its Unix personality.

Chapter 1: This chapter will provide you with an overview of the Terminal application, including a discussion of the differences between the Terminal and your standard Unix xterm. The chapter also enumerates many of the available command-line utilities that come with Mac OS X.
Chapter 2: This chapter describes the Mac OS X boot process, from when the Apple icon first appears on your display to when the system is up and running.
Chapter 3: This chapter will get you started with Mac OS X's powerful system for Directory Services, which replaces or complements the standard Unix flat files in the /etc directory.

Part II

Although Apple's C compiler is based on the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), there are important differences between compiling and linking on Mac OS X and on other platforms. This part of the book describes these differences and explains how you can package applications for Mac OS X.

Chapter 4: This chapter describes the peculiarities of the Apple C compiler, including using macros that are specific to Mac OS X, working with precompiled headers, and configuring a source tree for Mac OS X.
Chapter 5: Here we'll discuss building libraries, linking, and miscellaneous porting issues you may encounter with Mac OS X.
Chapter 6: This chapter describes the native package formats used by Mac OS X, as well as some other packaging options you can use to distribute applications.

Part III

This part of the book talks about the Darwin kernel, useful system administration tools, and setting up the X Window System to work alongside Aqua.

Chapter 7: Mac OS X is based on the open source Darwin kernel. This chapter describes how to download, compile, and install the source code for Darwin.
Chapter 8: This chapter describes commands for monitoring system status and configuring the operating system.
Chapter 9: This chapter explains how to install the X Windows System and build X applications.

Part IV

The final part of the book includes miscellaneous reference information.

Appendix A: Here you'll learn about the layout of the Mac OS X filesystem, with descriptions of key directories and files.
Appendix B: There are some great Mac OS X utilities that don't have manpages. This chapter provides them for you.