Using C (and Linux!) for Programming (and interfacing with FMS, etc.)

[Kristofer Rye]

This year is the first year that I'll be programming a FRC robot (one from a previous season, and for experimental purposes). The main problem with our existing system is that we use Windows for programming our robot. That works fine, and I think for the next season or so we'll keep using it, but we'd like to transition to a more "free" alternative. Rather than paying money for LabVIEW, we'd like to be able to program our robot using C (and any command-line tools), a text editor, and Linux. We've heard of the WPI library, but there doesn't seem to be a C version (or, at least, I haven't heard of it working in C).

I'm sure we'd be fine with using the Driver Station software that is provided, but beyond that we'd like to shy away from graphical utilities and use text editors and command-line compilers.

Does anyone have any level of experience with this kind of stuff in competition? Is it possible that we could get everything interfacing nicely with the FMS and the Driver Station? Do you have any helpful tips or examples? Thanks a bunch.