Skip to contentSkip to conversation

Clarifying process for submitting a patch

KJ Dale Sedivec 2 participants 2 messages Mar 13, 2006 Kernel janitors

lore
Share & tools
lore
#0 lore raw

I just jumped in and started working on the __init/__exit
issue (from the TODO list). I've got a small patch against the au88x0 (Aureal Vortex, I guess) sound driver ready to go. I understand most of the process for submitting a patch, but a few things aren't clear to me:

1. Do I or don't I include the kernel version being patched against? Documentation/SubmittingPatches says to,
http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt (4b) says not to. Should I include the version in the subject line, as specified in http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html? I don't see anyone on k-j doing this.

2. In general, who should I send to when submitting patches for k-j items? Possibilities apparently include:

* [email protected]
* The driver maintainer
* The subsystem maintainer
* The subsystem mailing list
* LKML
* Trivial patch monkey

Which of these should I send to? Obviously only "trivial" patches get send to trivial patch monkey. I see some people on k-j Cc'ing LKML, but some others don't.

3. I believe I read that it's good to submit a small patch to k-j first to see if it works. Should that be sent _only_ to k-j? If so, and if no one brings up any problems with the format of the patch on k-j, am I then supposed to resend that patch to some/all of the above places?

Thanks,
Dale

_______________________________________________
Kernel-janitors mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/kernel-janitors

#1 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · Dale Sedivec

1. Do I or don't I include the kernel version being patched against? Documentation/SubmittingPatches says to,
http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt (4b) says not to. Should I include the version in the subject line, as specified in http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html? I don't see anyone on k-j doing this.

It generally is a good idea to mention the version you're patching against somewhere. For most of the people the diff-lines contain this information e.g.

	--- linux-2.6.16-rc6.orig/some/file.c	2005-11-20 13:27:41.000000000 +0100
	+++ linux-2.6.16-rc6/some/file.c	2005-11-22 22:37:53.000000000 +0100
Quoted 4 lines

2. In general, who should I send to when submitting patches for k-j items? Possibilities apparently include:

* [email protected]

Of course :-)

Quoted 3 lines

* The driver maintainer
* The subsystem maintainer
* The subsystem mailing list

If you want to or feel confident enough, respectively. Just check the MAINTAINERS file for the maintainer in charge of the code you're changing.

Quoted 2 lines

* LKML
* Trivial patch monkey

Possibly yes.

Quoted 3 lines

Which of these should I send to? Obviously only "trivial" patches get send to trivial patch monkey. I see some people on k-j Cc'ing LKML, but some others don't.

That's up to you.

Quoted 5 lines

3. I believe I read that it's good to submit a small patch to k-j first to see if it works. Should that be sent _only_ to k-j? If so, and if no one brings up any problems with the format of the patch on k-j, am I then supposed to resend that patch to some/all of the above places?

Exactly. You might get some good (and more friendly ;-) feedback on k-j on how to possibly improve your patch. It probably isn't a very good idea to already send your very first patch to LKML. ;-)

The KJ FAQ document [1] also has some useful tipps.

[1] http://kerneljanitors.org/faq

HTH & Cheers, Tobias

_______________________________________________
Kernel-janitors mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/kernel-janitors