Kernel Janitors FAQ

Q: What is Kernel Janitors? A: It is a project to help wannabe kernel hackers get their feet wet

• while doing something useful for the community.

Q: What will I be doing? A: Basically, cleaning up the kernel.

• You can look at TODO for some example tasks.

Q: Prerequisites? A: Knowledge of C, being able to compile and boot Linux kernel.

Q: What documents should i read? A: SubmittingPatches, CodingStyle from Documentation/ .

• http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt and http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html are good to read also.

Q: What version should I be patching against? A: Latest "linus" (2.6.x-rcY from kernel.org).

• Be sure to check -mm and -kj trees to see if someone already did that.

Q: Where should I send patches to? A: Mailing list: kernel-janitors@lists.osdl.org

• If you feel confident enough, you can CC: someone from MAINTAINERS too.

Q: I have lots of patches that do the same thing. Can I just send them in

• one mail?

A: No, but don't send them in lots of small mails either. Try splitting

• them up per subsystem (drivers/net/, fs/ext3/...). See here:

  http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=112105809816217&w=2 for details.

Q: Where can I find janitors? A: On our mailing list and #kerneljanitor at irc.oftc.net

Q: I got some negative replies. Am I just wasting peoples' time? A: A nice motivational post from Linus: http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255

Mailer problems

Q: What is prefered way of sending patches? A: Inline (Insert file or similar, copy & paste is _not_ ok).

• If that's not possible, plain text attachment (no base64, quoted string or, tux forbid, html).

Q: What do I need to set in my e-mail client? A: Disable line wrap, and see upper FAQ.

Q: How do I test my settings are ok? A: Send patch to yourself, save it, try applying it. If it works it's

• ok. Also, you can send the patch to patch-tester@coderock.org; it will find little mistakes like incorrect patch level, the use of spaces instead of tabs, etc.