Compiling a working executable from C or Fortran source code can be a frustrating experience for new programmers. This “hands-on” tutorial will introduce the basic steps for compiling small- to medium-sized projects. Topics include working with multiple source files, header files, and external libraries, and automation using Make and Autotools (configure). For simplicity, we will only cover the build process for systems with a Linux operating system (such as the BU Shared Computing Cluster).

Familiarity with the Linux command line is assumed. Familiarity with C or Fortran will be helpful, but is not required.