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).
things like "update driver X", "bug fix for driver X", or "this patch
includes updates for subsystem X. Please apply."
+The maintainer will thank you if you write your patch description in a
+form which can be easily pulled into Linux's source code management
+system, git, as a "commit log". See #15, below.
+
If your description starts to get long, that's a sign that you probably
need to split up your patch. See #3, next.
+When you submit or resubmit a patch or patch series, include the
+complete patch description and justification for it. Don't just
+say that this is version N of the patch (series). Don't expect the
+patch merger to refer back to earlier patch versions or referenced
+URLs to find the patch description and put that into the patch.
+I.e., the patch (series) and its description should be self-contained.
+This benefits both the patch merger(s) and reviewers. Some reviewers
+probably didn't even receive earlier versions of the patch.
+
+If the patch fixes a logged bug entry, refer to that bug entry by
+number and URL.
3) Separate your changes.
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.
a man-pages patch, or at least a notification of the change,
so that some information makes its way into the manual pages.
-Even if the maintainer did not respond in step #4, make sure to ALWAYS
+Even if the maintainer did not respond in step #5, make sure to ALWAYS
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"
-patches. Trivial patches must qualify for one of the following rules:
+trivial@kernel.org which collects "trivial" patches. Have a look
+into the MAINTAINERS file for its current manager.
+Trivial patches must qualify for one of the following rules:
Spelling fixes in documentation
Spelling fixes which could break grep(1)
Warning fixes (cluttering with useless warnings is bad)
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/>
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.
When sending patches to Linus, always follow step #7.
Large changes are not appropriate for mailing lists, and some
-maintainers. If your patch, uncompressed, exceeds 40 kB in size,
+maintainers. If your patch, uncompressed, exceeds 300 kB in size,
it is preferred that you store your patch on an Internet-accessible
server, and provide instead a URL (link) pointing to your patch.
The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
-pass it on as a open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you
+pass it on as an open-source patch. The rules are pretty simple: if you
can certify the below:
Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
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
-13) When to use Acked-by:
+ SCSI: libiscsi regression in 2.6.25: fix nop timer handling
+
+ commit 4cf1043593db6a337f10e006c23c69e5fc93e722 upstream
+
+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 Reported-by:, Tested-by: and Reviewed-by:
+
+If this patch fixes a problem reported by somebody else, consider adding a
+Reported-by: tag to credit the reporter for their contribution. Please
+note that this tag should not be added without the reporter's permission,
+especially if the problem was not reported in a public forum. That said,
+if we diligently credit our bug reporters, they will, hopefully, be
+inspired to help us again in the future.
-14) The canonical patch format
+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:
+
+ 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 likelihood of your patch getting into the kernel.
+
+
+15) The canonical patch format
The canonical patch subject line is:
phrase" for every patch in a whole patch series (where a "patch
series" is an ordered sequence of multiple, related patches).
-Bear in mind that the "summary phrase" of your email becomes
-a globally-unique identifier for that patch. It propagates
-all the way into the git changelog. The "summary phrase" may
-later be used in developer discussions which refer to the patch.
-People will want to google for the "summary phrase" to read
-discussion regarding that patch.
+Bear in mind that the "summary phrase" of your email becomes a
+globally-unique identifier for that patch. It propagates all the way
+into the git changelog. The "summary phrase" may later be used in
+developer discussions which refer to the patch. People will want to
+google for the "summary phrase" to read discussion regarding that
+patch. It will also be the only thing that people may quickly see
+when, two or three months later, they are going through perhaps
+thousands of patches using tools such as "gitk" or "git log
+--oneline".
+
+For these reasons, the "summary" must be no more than 70-75
+characters, and it must describe both what the patch changes, as well
+as why the patch might be necessary. It is challenging to be both
+succinct and descriptive, but that is what a well-written summary
+should do.
+
+The "summary phrase" may be prefixed by tags enclosed in square
+brackets: "Subject: [PATCH tag] <summary phrase>". The tags are not
+considered part of the summary phrase, but describe how the patch
+should be treated. Common tags might include a version descriptor if
+the multiple versions of the patch have been sent out in response to
+comments (i.e., "v1, v2, v3"), or "RFC" to indicate a request for
+comments. If there are four patches in a patch series the individual
+patches may be numbered like this: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4. This assures
+that developers understand the order in which the patches should be
+applied and that they have reviewed or applied all of the patches in
+the patch series.
A couple of example Subjects:
The explanation body will be committed to the permanent source
changelog, so should make sense to a competent reader who has long
since forgotten the immediate details of the discussion that might
-have led to this patch.
+have led to this patch. Including symptoms of the failure which the
+patch addresses (kernel log messages, oops messages, etc.) is
+especially useful for people who might be searching the commit logs
+looking for the applicable patch. If a patch fixes a compile failure,
+it may not be necessary to include _all_ of the compile failures; just
+enough that it is likely that someone searching for the patch can find
+it. As in the "summary phrase", it is important to be both succinct as
+well as descriptive.
The "---" marker line serves the essential purpose of marking for patch
handling tools where the changelog message ends.
One good use for the additional comments after the "---" marker is for
-a diffstat, to show what files have changed, and the number of inserted
-and deleted lines per file. A diffstat is especially useful on bigger
-patches. Other comments relevant only to the moment or the maintainer,
-not suitable for the permanent changelog, should also go here.
-Use diffstat options "-p 1 -w 70" so that filenames are listed from the
-top of the kernel source tree and don't use too much horizontal space
-(easily fit in 80 columns, maybe with some indentation).
+a diffstat, to show what files have changed, and the number of
+inserted and deleted lines per file. A diffstat is especially useful
+on bigger patches. Other comments relevant only to the moment or the
+maintainer, not suitable for the permanent changelog, should also go
+here. A good example of such comments might be "patch changelogs"
+which describe what has changed between the v1 and v2 version of the
+patch.
+
+If you are going to include a diffstat after the "---" marker, please
+use diffstat options "-p 1 -w 70" so that filenames are listed from
+the top of the kernel source tree and don't use too much horizontal
+space (easily fit in 80 columns, maybe with some indentation).
See more details on the proper patch format in the following
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.
-Once significant exception is when moving code from one file to
-another in this case you should not modify the moved code at all in
+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
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>
Greg Kroah-Hartman, "How to piss off a kernel subsystem maintainer".
- <http://www.kroah.com/log/2005/03/31/>
- <http://www.kroah.com/log/2005/07/08/>
- <http://www.kroah.com/log/2005/10/19/>
- <http://www.kroah.com/log/2006/01/11/>
+ <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer.html>
+ <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-02.html>
+ <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-03.html>
+ <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-04.html>
+ <http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/maintainer-05.html>
NO!!!! No more huge patch bombs to linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org people!
<http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=112112749912944&w=2>
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 controversial changes in.
+ http://halobates.de/on-submitting-patches.pdf
+
--
Code Review / linux-2.6.git / blobdiff