LKD Patches, Hacking, and the Community

1. subscribe lkml by sending the following message in plain text to [e-mail]:

subscribe linux-kernel

2. 

    FAQ: 

    For beginning kernel hackers: 

    Linux Weekly News: 

    insightful commentary on kernel development: 

    内核直通车: 

3. coding style

    Documentation/CodingStyle

    缩进，switch语句，空格，花括号，行的长度，命名规则，注释等等风格

    ...

4. comments

    describe what and why your code is doing, not how it is doing it.

    important notes are often prefixed with "XXX:", and bugs are often prefixed with "FIXME:"

    self-generating documentation: Documentation/kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt

#make htmldocs
#make psdocs

5. i hate typedef as kernel community, yeah!

    never do:

#ifdef CONFIG_FOO
foo();
#endif

    but do:

#ifdef CONFIG_FOO
static int foo(void)
{
    /*..*/
}
#else
static inline int foo(void) {}
#endif /* CONFIG_FOO */

6. structure initializers

struct foo my_foo = {
    .a = INITIAL_A,
    .b = INITIAL_B,
}

7. use indent to format source according to given rules. default is GNU coding style, if wanna follow the linux kernel style:

indent -kr -i8 -ts8 -sob -l80 -ss -bs -ps1

    the script scripts/Lindent automatically invokes indent with the desired options.

8. in the root of the kernel source tree:

CREDITS: kernel hackers with significant contributions

MAINTAINERS: the maintainer for a specific driver or subsystem

9. bug report

REPORTING-BUGS   Documentation/oops-tracing.txt

(1) 很好的描述问题，最好告诉别人如何复现问题

(2) 可以将问题发给对应的maintainer，或者lkml

10. patches

create:

diff -urN linux-x.y.z/ linux/ > my-patch
diff -u linux-x.y.z/some/file linux/some/file > my-patch

git a perfect tool!

patch -p1 < ../my-patch
diffstat -p1 my-patch

submit:

the subject line of the email containing the patch is of the form "[PATCH] brief description", the body of the email describes in technical detail the changes your patch makes and the rationale behind them.