Preface

Introduction to the Solaris Developer Documentation is a starting point for those developers who have not previously worked in the Solaris^TM Operating System (Solaris OS). Seasoned Solaris developers who might not be aware of the various information resources can benefit from this guide as well. The purpose of the book is to help developers take advantage of the numerous interfaces, frameworks, and tools for the Solaris OS. The book provides an overview of the Solaris OS development environment, abstracts of key manuals for Solaris developers, and links to sources of detailed information.

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Note –

This Solaris release supports systems that use the SPARC® and x86 families of processor architectures: UltraSPARC®, SPARC64, AMD64, Pentium, and Xeon EM64T. The supported systems appear in the Solaris OS: Hardware Compatibility Lists at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/. This document cites any implementation differences between the platform types.

In this document these x86 related terms mean the following:

• “x86” refers to the larger family of 64-bit and 32-bit x86 compatible products.

• “x64” points out specific 64-bit information about AMD64 or EM64T systems.

• “32-bit x86” points out specific 32-bit information about x86 based systems.

For supported systems, see the Solaris OS: Hardware Compatibility Lists.

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Who Should Use This Book

This book is suggested for any developer who needs to learn more about the Solaris development environment. The book provides links for many information resources for learning about and developing on the Solaris OS.

How This Book Is Organized

This single-chapter manual consists of the following major sections:

• Which Solaris Distribution is Right for You?

• Learning About Development on the Solaris OS

• Map to the Solaris OS Man Page Collection

• Building Applications in the Solaris OS

• Programming to Specific Hardware and Configurations

• Network Programming in the Solaris OS

• Programming with Solaris Interfaces and Frameworks

Documentation, Support, and Training

The Sun web site provides information about the following additional resources:

• Documentation

• Support

• Training

Sun Welcomes Your Comments

Sun is interested in improving its documentation and welcomes your comments and suggestions. To share your comments, go to http://docs.sun.com and click Feedback.

Typographic Conventions

The following table describes the typographic conventions that are used in this book.

Table P–1 Typographic Conventions

Typeface	Meaning	Example
AaBbCc123	The names of commands, files, and directories, and onscreen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. machine_name% you have mail.
AaBbCc123	What you type, contrasted with onscreen computer output	machine_name% su Password:
aabbcc123	Placeholder: replace with a real name or value	The command to remove a file is rm filename.
AaBbCc123	Book titles, new terms, and terms to be emphasized	Read Chapter 6 in the User's Guide. A cache is a copy that is stored locally. Do not save the file. Note: Some emphasized items appear bold online.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default UNIX® system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

Table P–2 Shell Prompts

Shell	Prompt
C shell	machine_name%
C shell for superuser	machine_name#
Bourne shell and Korn shell	$
Bourne shell and Korn shell for superuser	#