Thank you for responding Rik; On Fri, 2008-07-11 at 19:55 -0400, Rik van Riel wrote: > On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:56:25 -0400 > William Case <billlinux@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > 1. I still have the suspicion, that experienced kernel programers > > have a mental map, construct, or guide posts -- call it what you > > will -- that you use, to locate within kernel code, the place, > > function, line, or whatever, to start trouble shooting, fixing > > or creating a piece of the kernel. It may have been gained by > > osmosis resulting from years of experience, but still I believe, > > that it is probably there in your heads somewhere. Of course, > > extracting this is biggest problem in expert systems. > > I believe that nobody knows all of the kernel code. > > Nobody. > > However, because the kernel is used like a library, with > most code paths being fairly limited in scope from entry > point to exit point, people can learn their "local area" > of the kernel very well. > > In fact, because entry and exit points are so well defined, > people do not need to learn the whole kernel. > > Besides, by the time you've learned everything about one > version of the kernel, many things will have changed already > upstream :) As mentioned earlier, I am going to mull over this and the other things that I have learnt. I will probably use my time getting familiar with 'git'. I assume it is similar to SVN which I have used a couple of times. I will download the kernel source and, perhaps, cscope, and then do some tentative explorations. I will probably want to do some cross comparisons with the contents of the /proc /dev and /sys virtual file systems of my own running kernel. Along the way I will see if I can uncover some of those "entry and exit points". And then we shall see what we shall see. Thanks to everyone for their patience. -- Regards Bill; Fedora 9, Gnome 2.22.3 Evo.2.22.3.1, Emacs 22.2.1 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
