2013/9/3 Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > On Tue, 3 Sep 2013, Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx wrote: > >> On Wed, 04 Sep 2013 02:05:42 +0530, Varad Gautam said: >> > Hi Vladis! Thanks for replying. I think I would be fine with >> > writing real code once I figure out what goes where. >> >> Well, assuming you have a background as a professional or very >> serious amateur programmer, *and* you have a *particular* drive to >> do something specific. There's still a lot of code being added by >> amateurs who have some weird USB device that doesn't have a driver >> and so on - but there's less and less room for beginners that just >> want to hack code and don't care where. Data structures and >> algorithms have gotten more complex, the locking is more >> fine-grained and subtle - gone are the days you could just take the >> Big Kernel Lock and not worry, now you ofteh have to understand >> stuff like RCU locking. >> >> So you might want to stop and ask yourself *why* you want to write >> code for the kernel. :) > > i'm going to jump in here since i see this question annoyingly > frequently -- "i'm new to the kernel and i want to get involved and > write code; how do i start?" to be blunt, if that's your starting > point, you're not ready to write code for the kernel. period. > > as vladis quite correctly points out, gone are the days when there > was piles of simple coding to be done. most of the kernel is well > established, solid and stable, and ongoing development is *very* > advanced. in other words, there's less and less room for enthusiastic > beginners. but there's more. > > at the very least, you should have an idea of what part of the kernel > interests you most. if you can't even identify which major subsystem > -- networking, USB, video, etc. -- you want to work on, you aren't > even *remotely* ready to start writing code. > > it's somewhat absurd to say you want to get involved in kernel > development, then ask *others* where you should start. it's like > saying, "i really want to write a book, but i have no idea what i > should write about. can you give me some ideas for a plot? and > characters? and possibly an ending?" yes, it's that silly. > > if you're a beginner, then the obvious starting point is to start > reading. and read. and read. and when you're done reading, read some > more. and slowly, you'll figure out what interests you most. and > that's where you then spend your time. Basically my answer to this kind of questions is, to start reading LDD3 [1] try to figure out what have changed and try to get the source code examples work with a newer kernel [2]. [1] http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/ [2] https://github.com/martinezjavier/ldd3 Cheers, Matthias > > rday > > -- > > ======================================================================== > Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA > http://crashcourse.ca > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday > LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday > ======================================================================== > > > _______________________________________________ > Kernelnewbies mailing list > Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies -- motzblog.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Kernelnewbies mailing list Kernelnewbies@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies
