We appear to have a gap in our process docs. We go into detail
on how to contribute code to the kernel, and how to be a subsystem
maintainer. I can't find any docs directed towards the thousands
of small scale maintainers, like folks maintaining a single driver
or a single network protocol.
Document our expectations and best practices. I'm hoping this doc
will be particularly useful to set expectations with HW vendors.
Reviewed-by: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Simon Horman <simon.horman@corigine.com>
Reviewed-by: Martin Habets <habetsm.xilinx@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230719183225.1827100-1-kuba@kernel.org
The repeated sign-offs necessary when a subsystem maintainer modifies an
incoming patch has been moved from submitting-patches.rst to
Documentation/maintainer, since the affairs of a subsystem maintainer
are not especially relevant to someone reading a guide for how to submit
their first patch.
Signed-off-by: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200903160545.83185-4-sir@cmpwn.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
As presented at the 2018 Linux Plumbers conference [1], the Maintainer
Entry Profile (formerly Subsystem Profile) is proposed as a way to reduce
friction between committers and maintainers and encourage conversations
amongst maintainers about common best practices. While coding-style,
submit-checklist, and submitting-drivers lay out some common expectations
there remain local customs and maintainer preferences that vary by
subsystem.
The profile contains documentation of some of the common policy
questions a contributor might have that are local to the subsystem /
device-driver, special considerations for the subsystem, or other
guidelines that are otherwise not covered by the top-level process
documents.
The initial and hopefully non-controversial headings in the profile are:
Overview:
General introduction to how the subsystem operates
Submit Checklist Addendum:
Mechanical items that gate submission staging, or other requirements
that gate patch acceptance.
Key Cycle Dates:
- Last -rc for new feature submissions: Expected lead time for submissions
- Last -rc to merge features: Deadline for merge decisions
Resubmit Cadence: When and preferred method to follow up with the
maintainer
Note that coding style guidelines are explicitly left out of this list.
See Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst for more details,
and a follow-on example profile for the libnvdimm subsystem.
[1]: https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/2/contributions/59/
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>
Cc: Steve French <stfrench@microsoft.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Tobin C. Harding <me@tobin.cc>
Cc: Olof Johansson <olof@lixom.net>
Cc: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Cc: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Cc: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Cc: Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>
Cc: Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@sifive.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/157462919309.1729495.10585699280061787229.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Every merge window seems to involve at least one episode where subsystem
maintainers don't manage their trees as Linus would like. Document the
expectations so that at least he has something to point people to.
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
There is currently very little documentation in the kernel on maintainer
level tasks. In particular there are no documents on creating pull
requests to submit to Linus.
Quoting Greg Kroah-Hartman on LKML:
Anyway, this actually came up at the kernel summit / maintainer
meeting a few weeks ago, in that "how do I make a
good pull request to Linus" is something we need to document.
Here's what I do, and it seems to work well, so maybe we should turn
it into the start of the documentation for how to do it.
(quote references: kernel summit, Europe 2017)
Create a new kernel documentation book 'how to be a maintainer'
(suggested by Jonathan Corbet). Add chapters on 'configuring git' and
'creating a pull request'.
Most of the content was written by Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman
in discussion on LKML. This is stated at the start of one of the
chapters and the original email thread is referenced in
'pull-requests.rst'.
Signed-off-by: Tobin C. Harding <me@tobin.cc>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Jakub Kicinski