On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 4:55 PM, julie Sullivan <kernelmail.jms@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote >> >> All, >> >> The last couple of days on the ext4 list there has been some >> discussion of ./scripts/checkpatch.pl and ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl. >> >> It looks like a simple whitespace patch is going to be rejected. >> (surpise!) >> >> If you haven't seen it, I think it is worth a read. Especially if >> you're a newbie. (As I assume the originator of the thread was.) > > > Thanks for this, Greg - much appreciated. This really was interesting to > follow. I thought the following > comment from Ted Ts'o summed the discussion up nicely: > >> >> If it's used by newbies who want to get warned about obvious things, >> that's fine. >> >> If it's used by maintainers as an automated way to catch nits, that's also >> fine. >> >> Maintainers are experts who know when it's OK to disregard flase >> positives. >> >> What really annoys me is newbies who use checkpatch.pl in its --file >> mode,and then assume that every single warning is a deadly bug that much be >> patched.Scripts by definitions are stupid, and don't substitute for >> thinking. checkpatch.pl at least as the excuse that it has some valid >> non-stupid uses. But I'm not convinced get_maintainers.pl has the same >> excuse. >> >> I at least never use it. I'll look through the MAINTAINERS file by hand, >> or I'll use git log by hand, and let my human intelligence figure out >> whether or not the patches that are turned up constitute "those that do real >> work", or are bullshit checkpatch.pl cleanup patches. Training people to use >> a script that by defintion can't be smart enough to make these distinction >> ultimately is a huge disservice to newbies (and experts won't use >> get_maintinaer.pl anyway, because they will want to know the context). > > I'm following the drivers mailing list trying to get a feel for protocol at > the moment > and one of the things that really surprised me was that there were patches > being sent > for pure code tidy-up re-formats (i.e. not as part of actually fixing bugs, > optimizing code etc.). > I had previously read Jon Corbet's 'How to Participate in the Linux > Community - > a Guide to the Development Process' where he made the following point: > >> Developers may >> start to generate reformatting patches as a way of gaining familiarity >> with the process, or as a way of getting their name into the kernel >> changelogs – or both. But pure coding style fixes are seen as noise >> by the development community; they tend to get a chilly reception. >> So this type of patch is best avoided. It is natural to fix the style of a >> piece of code while working on it for other reasons, but coding style >> changes should not be made for their own sake. >> > > The ext4 list discussion seems to indicate that this is still good advice > for would-be > contributors to follow... :-) > (I'm also impressed by the patience and diplomatic attitudes of maintainers > like Greg KH and Ted Ts'o who presumably must keep getting sent stuff like > this. :-) ) > > Thanks, > Julie Julie, If you want to send some "trivial" patches I believe finding corrections to spelling errors in comments is the easiest way. There is also the "trivial patch monkey" for this. ==> From submitting patches For small patches you may want to CC the Trivial Patch Monkey trivial@xxxxxxxxxx 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) Compilation fixes (only if they are actually correct) Runtime fixes (only if they actually fix things) Removing use of deprecated functions/macros (eg. check_region) Contact detail and documentation fixes Non-portable code replaced by portable code (even in arch-specific, 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) ==> I believe Adrian Bunk is the current trivial patch monkey, so these patches do get reviewed but I don't know to what extent. Greg -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
