Re: regarding future plans for EMC

[Matt Shaver <mshaver-at-erols.com>]

Fred Herenius wrote:

> But I'll ask
> again, are there any active plans concerning cleaning etc of code?

I guess it depends upon the meaning of "active", "plans", and "cleaning" 
;) . Let me address these in reverse order:

"cleaning"
There are too many #ifdefs. Part of the reason is that the EMC will 
(might?) compile and run on several different platforms (PC Linux, SGI, 
Windows, Alpha, etc.) and for Linux there are several versions of 
rtlinux supported as well as RTAI. If we could narrow the these choices 
down to one, a lot of the #ifdefs would go away. The problem is that, 
although 99.999% of all EMC systems are PC/rtlinux systems, there are (I 
assume) SOME users of the other platforms. Should they be abandoned? 
Should there be a streamlined EMClite (I really hate that name, don't 
use it...)? Another possible "have your cake and eat it too" solution 
would be to move as many of the conditional statements into the build 
system as possible using autoconf and automake. This leads me to...

"plans"
Let's see, so far I've talked to Fred & Will at NISTand Ray Henry about 
switching to autoconf and automake. I also started reading _The Goat 
Book_ (http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/). I am in over my head, but 
flailing madly to stay afloat...

"active"
This is the hardest one. For myself, before I could even begin to make 
any changes, I'd have to really understand the existing code. As I am 
only a beginning C programmer, that's a lot to swallow... Perhaps the 
thing to do first is to write better (more?) documentation.

Matt