http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt
Andrew Morton's patch scripts:
-http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/
+http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/patch-scripts.tar.gz
Instead of these scripts, quilt is the recommended patch management
tool (see above).
Check your patch for basic style violations, details of which can be
found in Documentation/CodingStyle. Failure to do so simply wastes
-the reviewers time and will get your patch rejected, probabally
+the reviewers time and will get your patch rejected, probably
without even being read.
At a minimum you should check your patches with the patch style
-checker prior to submission (scripts/patchcheck.pl). You should
+checker prior to submission (scripts/checkpatch.pl). You should
be able to justify all violations that remain in your patch.
copy the maintainer when you change their code.
For small patches you may want to CC the Trivial Patch Monkey
-trivial@kernel.org managed by Adrian Bunk; which collects "trivial"
+trivial@kernel.org managed by Jesper Juhl; which collects "trivial"
patches. Trivial patches must qualify for one of the following rules:
Spelling fixes in documentation
Spelling fixes which could break grep(1)
since people copy, as long as it's trivial)
Any fix by the author/maintainer of the file (ie. patch monkey
in re-transmission mode)
-URL: <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/bunk/trivial/>
+URL: <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/juhl/trivial/>
Exception: If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
you to re-send them using MIME.
-
-WARNING: Some mailers like Mozilla send your messages with
----- message header ----
-Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
----- message header ----
-The problem is that "format=flowed" makes some of the mailers
-on receiving side to replace TABs with spaces and do similar
-changes. Thus the patches from you can look corrupted.
-
-To fix this just make your mozilla defaults/pref/mailnews.js file to look like:
-pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false); // RFC 2646=======
-pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support", true);
-
-
+See Documentation/email-clients.txt for hints about configuring
+your e-mail client so that it sends your patches untouched.
8) E-mail size.
now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
point out some special detail about the sign-off.
+If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly
+modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not
+exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to
+rule (c), you should ask the submitter to rediff, but this is a totally
+counter-productive waste of time and energy. Rule (b) allows you to adjust
+the code, but then it is very impolite to change one submitter's code and
+make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it is recommended that
+you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and yours, indicating
+the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory about this, it
+seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or name, all
+enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious that
+you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example :
+
+ Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
+ [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h]
+ Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org>
+
+This practise is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and
+want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix,
+and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances
+can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one
+which appears in the changelog.
+
+Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practise
+to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
+message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
+here's what we see in 2.6-stable :
+
+ Date: Tue May 13 19:10:30 2008 +0000
+
+ SCSI: libiscsi regression in 2.6.25: fix nop timer handling
+
+ commit 4cf1043593db6a337f10e006c23c69e5fc93e722 upstream
-13) When to use Acked-by:
+And here's what appears in 2.4 :
+
+ Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200
+
+ wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay
+
+ [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]
+
+Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
+tracking your trees, and to people trying to trouble-shoot bugs in your
+tree.
+
+
+13) When to use Acked-by: and Cc:
The Signed-off-by: tag indicates that the signer was involved in the
development of the patch, or that he/she was in the patch's delivery path.
For example, if a patch affects multiple subsystems and has an Acked-by: from
one subsystem maintainer then this usually indicates acknowledgement of just
the part which affects that maintainer's code. Judgement should be used here.
- When in doubt people should refer to the original discussion in the mailing
+When in doubt people should refer to the original discussion in the mailing
list archives.
+If a person has had the opportunity to comment on a patch, but has not
+provided such comments, you may optionally add a "Cc:" tag to the patch.
+This is the only tag which might be added without an explicit action by the
+person it names. This tag documents that potentially interested parties
+have been included in the discussion
+
+
+14) Using Tested-by: and Reviewed-by:
+
+A Tested-by: tag indicates that the patch has been successfully tested (in
+some environment) by the person named. This tag informs maintainers that
+some testing has been performed, provides a means to locate testers for
+future patches, and ensures credit for the testers.
+
+Reviewed-by:, instead, indicates that the patch has been reviewed and found
+acceptable according to the Reviewer's Statement:
-14) The canonical patch format
+ Reviewer's statement of oversight
+
+ By offering my Reviewed-by: tag, I state that:
+
+ (a) I have carried out a technical review of this patch to
+ evaluate its appropriateness and readiness for inclusion into
+ the mainline kernel.
+
+ (b) Any problems, concerns, or questions relating to the patch
+ have been communicated back to the submitter. I am satisfied
+ with the submitter's response to my comments.
+
+ (c) While there may be things that could be improved with this
+ submission, I believe that it is, at this time, (1) a
+ worthwhile modification to the kernel, and (2) free of known
+ issues which would argue against its inclusion.
+
+ (d) While I have reviewed the patch and believe it to be sound, I
+ do not (unless explicitly stated elsewhere) make any
+ warranties or guarantees that it will achieve its stated
+ purpose or function properly in any given situation.
+
+A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an
+appropriate modification of the kernel without any remaining serious
+technical issues. Any interested reviewer (who has done the work) can
+offer a Reviewed-by tag for a patch. This tag serves to give credit to
+reviewers and to inform maintainers of the degree of review which has been
+done on the patch. Reviewed-by: tags, when supplied by reviewers known to
+understand the subject area and to perform thorough reviews, will normally
+increase the liklihood of your patch getting into the kernel.
+
+
+15) The canonical patch format
The canonical patch subject line is:
references.
+16) Sending "git pull" requests (from Linus emails)
+
+Please write the git repo address and branch name alone on the same line
+so that I can't even by mistake pull from the wrong branch, and so
+that a triple-click just selects the whole thing.
+
+So the proper format is something along the lines of:
+
+ "Please pull from
+ git://jdelvare.pck.nerim.net/jdelvare-2.6 i2c-for-linus
+
+ to get these changes:"
+
+so that I don't have to hunt-and-peck for the address and inevitably
+get it wrong (actually, I've only gotten it wrong a few times, and
+checking against the diffstat tells me when I get it wrong, but I'm
+just a lot more comfortable when I don't have to "look for" the right
+thing to pull, and double-check that I have the right branch-name).
+
+
+Please use "git diff -M --stat --summary" to generate the diffstat:
+the -M enables rename detection, and the summary enables a summary of
+new/deleted or renamed files.
+
+With rename detection, the statistics are rather different [...]
+because git will notice that a fair number of the changes are renames.
-----------------------------------
SECTION 2 - HINTS, TIPS, AND TRICKS
Nuff said. If your code deviates too much from this, it is likely
to be rejected without further review, and without comment.
+One significant exception is when moving code from one file to
+another -- in this case you should not modify the moved code at all in
+the same patch which moves it. This clearly delineates the act of
+moving the code and your changes. This greatly aids review of the
+actual differences and allows tools to better track the history of
+the code itself.
+
Check your patches with the patch style checker prior to submission
-(scripts/checkpatch.pl). You should be able to justify all
-violations that remain in your patch.
+(scripts/checkpatch.pl). The style checker should be viewed as
+a guide not as the final word. If your code looks better with
+a violation then its probably best left alone.
+
+The checker reports at three levels:
+ - ERROR: things that are very likely to be wrong
+ - WARNING: things requiring careful review
+ - CHECK: things requiring thought
+
+You should be able to justify all violations that remain in your
+patch.
limitations, and under gcc they are as cheap as macros.
Macros should only be used for cases where a static inline is clearly
-suboptimal [there a few, isolated cases of this in fast paths],
+suboptimal [there are a few, isolated cases of this in fast paths],
or where it is impossible to use a static inline function [such as
string-izing].
----------------------
Andrew Morton, "The perfect patch" (tpp).
- <http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt>
+ <http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/stuff/tpp.txt>
Jeff Garzik, "Linux kernel patch submission format".
<http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html>
<http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=112112749912944&w=2>
Kernel Documentation/CodingStyle:
- <http://sosdg.org/~coywolf/lxr/source/Documentation/CodingStyle>
+ <http://users.sosdg.org/~qiyong/lxr/source/Documentation/CodingStyle>
Linus Torvalds's mail on the canonical patch format:
<http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/4/7/183>
+
+Andi Kleen, "On submitting kernel patches"
+ Some strategies to get difficult or controversal changes in.
+ http://halobates.de/on-submitting-patches.pdf
+
--
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff