Contributing to EMC

[OUTWATER ~ KEITH J /5G3110 <vac4050-at-tueng.rsc.raytheon.com>]

Greetings all - 
I have just started playing with EMC with the possibility of using EMC to
control a home-built plasma cutter.

Sometime in the 'future' I would like to build a large (approx 65 foot) metal
boat for which CNC cutting files are available.  The high cost of plasma cutting
(about $30,000 according to the designer!) is what's motivating me to try this 
(along with the fact that I like to build things and I like to program computers 
and embedded systems).

I have successfully built (sim works) EMC as follows:
redhat 7.0 distro
kernel 2.2.18
emc-1.1.17
rtlinux-3.0

There were a few issues during the build:
  a. I had to make a .def file for kernel 2.2.18
  b. I had to change rtlinux_.def to set the rtlinux version
  c. I had to add #includes in several source files to get rcslib and emc
     to compile cleanly.
  d. I had to add return() statements in several functions to compile cleanly.
  
At this point I'd like to contribute to EMC if the maintainers are interested.
If so, I'm thinking about trying to move EMC from the scripted build process to
the GNU style 'configure' system using GNU automake and autoconf.  It seems that
building and installing EMC is one of the most popular topics on the lists.  
Using the GNU build process would let users type './configure; make install' and 
be done.

I don't know too much about autoconf, automake (and the EMC source base for that 
matter), but I'm interested in learning automake and autoconf and this seems 
like a good application to use autoconf/automake on.

If there is any interest in this, how do I submit patches?

Regards,
Keith

Keith Outwater
Principal Engineer
Raytheon Missile Systems
Tucson, AZ

(520) 794-2518
vac4050-at-<remove-when-you-mail-me>cae597.rsc.raytheon.com