Where to ask questions about "Linux/Unix programming libraries" ? Is it better to ask such on Unix.SE or StackOverflow ?
As @Mat pointed out FAQ says "If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow." .
So I think about questions of library existence :
- Could you suggest programming library (C/C++) doing this and that with Unix ?
- Which programming library (in terms of popularity) is more common, better?
- ... other related with existence of library, not programming with it.
I mean this and that I mean very Unixy/Linuxy things, like ncurses, X-window system... etc.
My feeling is that answering questions about existence, does not require knowledge about programming.
For example, I could answer question "What are cryptographic programming libraries installed on your system?" by using my package manager or just listing /lib
to find out : "On my system there is /lib/libcrypto.so
".
Motivation:
What's more. I believe, experienced Unix,Linux SysAdmin have seen so many ".so" files and packages that are related to, that have better intuition, which solutions are used around that programmer, who might know about programming libraries which are very rare, and be surprised about dependences his program has. I try to write program that has as less rare dependencies as possible, to make installation of package clear and lightweight. (Imagine installing small 200k program with 200MB dependencies. I try to avoid it, but using popular and lightweight programming libraries. Sometimes a few lines of code can decrease dependencies size from hundreds of MB to just a few of commonly used).