-------------------------
Major and minor numbers for block and character devices are allocated
-by the Linux assigned name and number authority (currently better
-known as H Peter Anvin). The site is http://www.lanana.org/. This
+by the Linux assigned name and number authority (currently this is
+Torben Mathiasen). The site is http://www.lanana.org/. This
also deals with allocating numbers for devices that are not going to
be submitted to the mainstream kernel.
+See Documentation/devices.txt for more information on this.
-If you don't use assigned numbers then when you device is submitted it will
-get given an assigned number even if that is different from values you may
+If you don't use assigned numbers then when your device is submitted it will
+be given an assigned number even if that is different from values you may
have shipped to customers before.
Who To Submit Drivers To
If the code area has a general maintainer then please submit it to
the maintainer listed in MAINTAINERS in the kernel file. If the
maintainer does not respond or you cannot find the appropriate
- maintainer then please contact Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
+ maintainer then please contact the 2.2 kernel maintainer:
+ Marc-Christian Petersen <m.c.p@wolk-project.de>.
Linux 2.4:
The same rules apply as 2.2. The final contact point for Linux 2.4
Licensing: The code must be released to us under the
GNU General Public License. We don't insist on any kind
- of exclusively GPL licensing, and if you wish the driver
+ of exclusive GPL licensing, and if you wish the driver
to be useful to other communities such as BSD you may well
wish to release under multiple licenses.
To create a patch for a single file, it is often sufficient to do:
- SRCTREE= linux-2.4
+ SRCTREE= linux-2.6
MYFILE= drivers/net/mydriver.c
cd $SRCTREE
or unmodified kernel source tree, and generate a diff against your
own source tree. For example:
- MYSRC= /devel/linux-2.4
+ MYSRC= /devel/linux-2.6
- tar xvfz linux-2.4.0-test11.tar.gz
- mv linux linux-vanilla
- wget http://www.moses.uklinux.net/patches/dontdiff
- diff -uprN -X dontdiff linux-vanilla $MYSRC > /tmp/patch
- rm -f dontdiff
+ tar xvfz linux-2.6.12.tar.gz
+ mv linux-2.6.12 linux-2.6.12-vanilla
+ diff -uprN -X linux-2.6.12-vanilla/Documentation/dontdiff \
+ linux-2.6.12-vanilla $MYSRC > /tmp/patch
"dontdiff" is a list of files which are generated by the kernel during
the build process, and should be ignored in any diff(1)-generated
-patch. dontdiff is maintained by Tigran Aivazian <tigran@veritas.com>
+patch. The "dontdiff" file is included in the kernel tree in
+2.6.12 and later. For earlier kernel versions, you can get it
+from <http://www.xenotime.net/linux/doc/dontdiff>.
Make sure your patch does not include any extra files which do not
belong in a patch submission. Make sure to review your patch -after-
If your changes produce a lot of deltas, you may want to look into
splitting them into individual patches which modify things in
-logical stages, this will facilitate easier reviewing by other
+logical stages. This will facilitate easier reviewing by other
kernel developers, very important if you want your patch accepted.
-There are a number of scripts which can aid in this;
+There are a number of scripts which can aid in this:
Quilt:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt
Randy Dunlap's patch scripts:
-http://developer.osdl.org/rddunlap/scripts/patching-scripts.tgz
+http://www.xenotime.net/linux/scripts/patching-scripts-002.tar.gz
Andrew Morton's patch scripts:
-http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/patch-scripts-0.16
+http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/patch-scripts-0.20
+
+
2) Describe your changes.
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)
+URL: <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/trivial/>
+
point out some special detail about the sign-off.
+
+12) More references for submitting patches
+
+Andrew Morton, "The perfect patch" (tpp).
+ <http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/tpp.txt>
+
+Jeff Garzik, "Linux kernel patch submission format."
+ <http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html>
+
+
+
-----------------------------------
SECTION 2 - HINTS, TIPS, AND TRICKS
-----------------------------------
4) Don't over-design.
Don't try to anticipate nebulous future cases which may or may not
-be useful: "Make it as simple as you can, and no simpler"
-
-
+be useful: "Make it as simple as you can, and no simpler."