Nmap Development: Re: where to start from

["Kris Katterjohn" <katterjohn () gmail com>]

On 4/3/07, Muhammad Ali <m01ali1985 () yahoo co uk> wrote:
> Hi Everyone
> Can anyone help me with the following.
> I want to start development for nmap,basically for learning development in
> linux and c/c++ language. i can program in Java. I downloaded the source for
> nmap, but i not sure where to start from. I have no idea what are the
> different part of nmap.I could not find a good start guide though.
>
> Can you suggest me any link,book so it can learn and start/learn a bit
> about nmap source code with documentation.
>
> which language nmap is writen in, which IDE can i use or any other tools.
> Thanks
Most of Nmap is written in C++, with just plain C in portions.

On Linux, you need gcc/g++ (well, any C and C++ compilers should work but
these come standard) and libraries (if gcc and g++ are installed, you most
likely have these installed) to make it.  You can view the source code in
any text editor.

You can probably type this in without problems:

# ./configure && make && make install

.. and then Nmap will be made and installed for you!

There are many books you can buy (or online tutorials you can read) to learn
about C/C++ programming.  For C, I loved K&R (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%26R).  I never really got an actual C++ book,
so I can't really recommend one.

As far as learning the code, you may just want to start in nmap.cc with the
function nmap_main() and follow it.  When you see something you don't know,
grep the source code and try to find it. If you can't find it, grep in
/usr/include and you'll probably find it there

Hopefully somebody else can post up filling in any holes I left :)

Thanks,
Kris Katterjohn

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