Difficulty building RTAI linuxcnc from source

Hi -
Thank you.
I looked at limit_axis.comp. It appeared to be a generic anti-collision utility that I would probably be okay without, so, as you did, I deleted it.
Then make returned an error having to do with files raster.c, raster.comp and raster.o. Figuring your guidance was to delete files that caused errors, I deleted all the raster.xxx files.
But they returned on subsequent attempts to make.
I tried restarting, thinking that might make the files stay away after being deleted, but they returned.
I'm attaching the output from make.

The larger question is how to compile for a three-axis mill using a Motenc-Lite board. Just that one simple machine. LinuxCNC attempts to have something for everyone, but that makes it voluminous and complex. I wonder if there is a way to restrict configure and make in order to reduce the number of files that have to be correct.

robert@debian:~/linuxcnc-dev/src$ make
Reading 205/205 dependency files
Done reading dependencies
MAKEFLAGS="" \
/usr/bin/python3.7 modsilent.py make KBUILD_EXTRA_SYMBOLS=/usr/realtime-4.19.195-rtai-amd64/modules/Module.symvers -C /usr/src/linux-headers-4.19.195-rtai-amd64 M=/home/robert/linuxcnc-dev/src CC=gcc V=0 modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.19.195-rtai-amd64'
CC [M] /home/robert/linuxcnc-dev/src/objects/hal/components/raster.o
/home/robert/linuxcnc-dev/src/objects/hal/components/raster.c:14:10: fatal error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory
#include <stdlib.h>
^~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [scripts/Makefile.build:304: /home/robert/linuxcnc-dev/src/objects/hal/components/raster.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [Makefile:1547: _module_/home/robert/linuxcnc-dev/src] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.19.195-rtai-amd64'
make: *** [Makefile:547: modules] Error 2
robert@debian:~/linuxcnc-dev/src$

Which OS and LinuxCNC version are you trying to build?

It isn't usually this difficult.

Try

make clean
git checkout 2.8
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make setuid

To compile 2.8 (which is probably more likely to work with RTAI)

Thank you for your help.
I cd to my linuxcnc-dev directory, and when I do git checkout 2.8 it returns
error pathspec "2.8" did not match any files known to git
My linuxcnc-dev directory includes a .git directory.
I've tried cd-ing to linuxcnhc-dev/src and doing git checkout 2.8 from there. The result was the same, i.e. the pathspec error.

Try "git fetch" and / or "git pull" to update the databases.

Also, git branch -r will show all the available branches on the server

Thank you for continuing to suggest things ... I feel I'm missing something fundamental and it's preventing these suggested actions from working.

I'm pasting in the output I get from doing git fetch and git pull.
I'm typing those things in a command window from my linuxcnc-dev directory.

robert@debian:~/linuxcnc-dev$ git fetch
robert@debian:~/linuxcnc-dev$ git pull
There is no tracking information for the current branch.
Please specify which branch you want to merge with.
See git-pull(1) for details.

git pull <remote> <branch>

If you wish to set tracking information for this branch you can do so with:

git branch --set-upstream-to=<remote>/<branch> master

robert@debian:~/linuxcnc-dev$

What does

git branch

say?