Red Hat has drawn somewhere approaching 3000 developers to its Boston-based developer summit this year with promises of insight into both the JBoss middleware platform and the wider Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development environment. As befits this kind of annual shindig, the company made mention of its newly expanded Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program, which is sporting enhancements to its developer suite.
The freshly greased up and polished suite of tools boasts of "synchronized dual availability" on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, thus allowing developers to deploy applications freely to either environment.
Red Hat's platform business unit VP Jim Totton argues that a "stable development toolset" is the key to taking advantage of new Linux advancements for Linux programmers. "The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program makes it easy for developers to access industry-leading developer tools, instructional resources, and an ecosystem of experts to help Linux programmers maximize productivity in building great Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications."
Red Hat is very fond of interoperability, interconnectivity, and the need to integrate data and its supporting applications at all levels. No surprise then that it is positioning this toolset as suitable for "many types of Linux developers" including:
- Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)
- Software solution providers
- Systems Integrators (SIs)
- Enterprise developers
- Governmental software developers
As expected, the latest tooling can be used to develop applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premise or off-premise in physical, virtual, and cloud deployments, and on OpenShift, the leading open Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
"The velocity of development is as high today as it has ever been, which means that developers are putting a premium on a toolchain that is current from libraries to compiler," said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk. "With its expanded Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program and toolset, Red Hat aims to provide developers with just that."
The new developer suite now includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux, variants, and related Add-On software for development use including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, High-Availability Add-On, Load Balancer Add-On, Resilient Storage Add-On, Scalable File System Add-On, High-Performance Network Add-On, Extended Update Support, and MRG Real Time and Smart Management Add-on.
Using this developer toolset, software developers can now develop Linux applications using C and C++ upstream tools. These tools include the latest GNU Compiler Collection (GCC 4.7) with support for C and C++; the latest version of the GNU Project Debugger (GDB 7.4); and the GNU binutils collection of binary developer tools, version 2.22, for the creation and management of Linux applications.
