1 Linux Kernel patch sumbittal checklist
2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 Here are some basic things that developers should do if they want to see their
5 kernel patch submissions accepted more quickly.
7 These are all above and beyond the documentation that is provided in
8 Documentation/SubmittingPatches and elsewhere regarding submitting Linux
13 1: Builds cleanly with applicable or modified CONFIG options =y, =m, and
14 =n. No gcc warnings/errors, no linker warnings/errors.
16 2: Passes allnoconfig, allmodconfig
18 3: Builds on multiple CPU architectures by using local cross-compile tools
19 or something like PLM at OSDL.
21 4: ppc64 is a good architecture for cross-compilation checking because it
22 tends to use `unsigned long' for 64-bit quantities.
24 5: Matches kernel coding style(!)
26 6: Any new or modified CONFIG options don't muck up the config menu.
28 7: All new Kconfig options have help text.
30 8: Has been carefully reviewed with respect to relevant Kconfig
31 combinations. This is very hard to get right with testing -- brainpower
34 9: Check cleanly with sparse.
36 10: Use 'make checkstack' and 'make namespacecheck' and fix any problems
37 that they find. Note: checkstack does not point out problems explicitly,
38 but any one function that uses more than 512 bytes on the stack is a
41 11: Include kernel-doc to document global kernel APIs. (Not required for
42 static functions, but OK there also.) Use 'make htmldocs' or 'make
43 mandocs' to check the kernel-doc and fix any issues.
45 12: Has been tested with CONFIG_PREEMPT, CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT,
46 CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB, CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC, CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES,
47 CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK, CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK_SLEEP all simultaneously
50 13: Has been build- and runtime tested with and without CONFIG_SMP and
53 14: If the patch affects IO/Disk, etc: has been tested with and without
56 15: All codepaths have been exercised with all lockdep features enabled.
58 16: All new /proc entries are documented under Documentation/
60 17: All new kernel boot parameters are documented in
61 Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt.
63 18: All new module parameters are documented with MODULE_PARM_DESC()
65 19: All new userspace interfaces are documented in Documentation/ABI/.
66 See Documentation/ABI/README for more information.
68 20: Check that it all passes `make headers_check'.
70 21: Has been checked with injection of at least slab and page-allocation
71 fauilures. See Documentation/fault-injection/.
73 If the new code is substantial, addition of subsystem-specific fault
74 injection might be appropriate.
76 22: Newly-added code has been compiled with `gcc -W' (use "make
77 EXTRA_CFLAGS=-W"). This will generate lots of noise, but is good for
78 finding bugs like "warning: comparison between signed and unsigned".
80 23: Tested after it has been merged into the -mm patchset to make sure
81 that it still works with all of the other queued patches and various
82 changes in the VM, VFS, and other subsystems.
84 24: Avoid whitespace damage such as indenting with spaces or whitespace
85 at the end of lines. You can test this by feeding the patch to
86 "git apply --check --whitespace=error-all"