From: Domen Puncer Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 23:07:37 +0000 Subject: [KJ] faq and tips Message-Id: <20050414230737.GB3983@nd47.coderock.org> MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============85387416792217308==" List-Id: To: kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org --===============85387416792217308== Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Hi. Maybe this will be useful to somebody. Comments, updates, fixes? Kernel Janitors FAQ Q: What is Kernel Janitors? A: It is a project to help wannabe kernel hackers get their feet wet while doing something useful for the community. Q: What will I be doing? A: Basically, cleaning up the kernel. You can look at TODO for some example tasks. Q: Prerequisites? A: Knowledge of C, being able to compile and boot Linux kernel. Q: What documents should i read? A: SubmittingPatches, CodingStyle from Documentation/ . http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt and http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html are good to read also. Q: Where should I send patches to? A: Mailing list: kernel-janitors@lists.osdl.org If you feel confident enough, you can CC: someone from MAINTAINERS too. Q: Where can I find janitors? A: On our mailing list and #kerneljanitor at irc.oftc.net Q: I got some negative replies. Am I just wasting peoples' time? A: A nice motivational post from Linus: http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255 Mailer problems --------------- Q: What is prefered way of sending patches? A: Inline (Insert file or similar, copy & paste is _not_ ok). If that's not possible, plain text attachment (no base64, quoted string or, tux forbid, html). Q: What do I need to set in my e-mail client? A: Disable line wrap, and see upper FAQ. Q: How do I test my settings are ok? A: Send patch to yourself, save it, try applying it. If it works it's ok. Some tips --------- Use cscope or ctags for finding functions. ketchup [1] is very useful for keeping up to date kernels. Also for managing lots of patches you might find patch-scripts[2] or quilt[3] useful. [1] http://www.selenic.com/ketchup/ [2] http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/patch-scripts-0.18/ [3] http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt When diffing more files (especially in different directories), linked trees (cp -al) are useful as they will work much faster; patch already knows that is should break hardlinks; vim can be taught by setting "set backupcopy=auto,breakhardlink" in your ~/.vimrc . Example usage: ketchup 2.6.12 cp -al linux-2.6.12 mytree # change some random files in mytree/ diff -pruNX Documentation/dontdiff linux-2.6.12 mytree > my_new_patch Since typing Signed-off-by gets boring, here's a ~/.vimrc sample: map ^iSigned-off-by: Random C Developer ^ map! Signed-off-by: Random C Developer Trailing whitespace: After you put this in ~/.vimrc it will be hard to not fix it: highlight WhitespaceEOL ctermbg=red guibg=red match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+$/ --===============85387416792217308== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ Kernel-janitors mailing list Kernel-janitors@lists.osdl.org http://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/kernel-janitors --===============85387416792217308==--