| Linux Kernel patch submission checklist |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| Here are some basic things that developers should do if they want to see their |
| kernel patch submissions accepted more quickly. |
| |
| These are all above and beyond the documentation that is provided in |
| Documentation/SubmittingPatches and elsewhere regarding submitting Linux |
| kernel patches. |
| |
| |
| 1: If you use a facility then #include the file that defines/declares |
| that facility. Don't depend on other header files pulling in ones |
| that you use. |
| |
| 2: Builds cleanly with applicable or modified CONFIG options =y, =m, and |
| =n. No gcc warnings/errors, no linker warnings/errors. |
| |
| 2b: Passes allnoconfig, allmodconfig |
| |
| 3: Builds on multiple CPU architectures by using local cross-compile tools |
| or some other build farm. |
| |
| 4: ppc64 is a good architecture for cross-compilation checking because it |
| tends to use `unsigned long' for 64-bit quantities. |
| |
| 5: Check your patch for general style as detailed in |
| Documentation/CodingStyle. Check for trivial violations with the |
| patch style checker prior to submission (scripts/checkpatch.pl). |
| You should be able to justify all violations that remain in |
| your patch. |
| |
| 6: Any new or modified CONFIG options don't muck up the config menu. |
| |
| 7: All new Kconfig options have help text. |
| |
| 8: Has been carefully reviewed with respect to relevant Kconfig |
| combinations. This is very hard to get right with testing -- brainpower |
| pays off here. |
| |
| 9: Check cleanly with sparse. |
| |
| 10: Use 'make checkstack' and 'make namespacecheck' and fix any problems |
| that they find. Note: checkstack does not point out problems explicitly, |
| but any one function that uses more than 512 bytes on the stack is a |
| candidate for change. |
| |
| 11: Include kernel-doc to document global kernel APIs. (Not required for |
| static functions, but OK there also.) Use 'make htmldocs' or 'make |
| mandocs' to check the kernel-doc and fix any issues. |
| |
| 12: Has been tested with CONFIG_PREEMPT, CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT, |
| CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB, CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC, CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES, |
| CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK, CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK_SLEEP all simultaneously |
| enabled. |
| |
| 13: Has been build- and runtime tested with and without CONFIG_SMP and |
| CONFIG_PREEMPT. |
| |
| 14: If the patch affects IO/Disk, etc: has been tested with and without |
| CONFIG_LBDAF. |
| |
| 15: All codepaths have been exercised with all lockdep features enabled. |
| |
| 16: All new /proc entries are documented under Documentation/ |
| |
| 17: All new kernel boot parameters are documented in |
| Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt. |
| |
| 18: All new module parameters are documented with MODULE_PARM_DESC() |
| |
| 19: All new userspace interfaces are documented in Documentation/ABI/. |
| See Documentation/ABI/README for more information. |
| Patches that change userspace interfaces should be CCed to |
| linux-api@vger.kernel.org. |
| |
| 20: Check that it all passes `make headers_check'. |
| |
| 21: Has been checked with injection of at least slab and page-allocation |
| failures. See Documentation/fault-injection/. |
| |
| If the new code is substantial, addition of subsystem-specific fault |
| injection might be appropriate. |
| |
| 22: Newly-added code has been compiled with `gcc -W' (use "make |
| EXTRA_CFLAGS=-W"). This will generate lots of noise, but is good for |
| finding bugs like "warning: comparison between signed and unsigned". |
| |
| 23: Tested after it has been merged into the -mm patchset to make sure |
| that it still works with all of the other queued patches and various |
| changes in the VM, VFS, and other subsystems. |
| |
| 24: All memory barriers {e.g., barrier(), rmb(), wmb()} need a comment in the |
| source code that explains the logic of what they are doing and why. |
| |
| 25: If any ioctl's are added by the patch, then also update |
| Documentation/ioctl/ioctl-number.txt. |