SubmitChecklist 4.4 KB

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  1. Linux Kernel patch submission checklist
  2. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  3. Here are some basic things that developers should do if they want to see their
  4. kernel patch submissions accepted more quickly.
  5. These are all above and beyond the documentation that is provided in
  6. Documentation/SubmittingPatches and elsewhere regarding submitting Linux
  7. kernel patches.
  8. 1: If you use a facility then #include the file that defines/declares
  9. that facility. Don't depend on other header files pulling in ones
  10. that you use.
  11. 2: Builds cleanly with applicable or modified CONFIG options =y, =m, and
  12. =n. No gcc warnings/errors, no linker warnings/errors.
  13. 2b: Passes allnoconfig, allmodconfig
  14. 2c: Builds successfully when using O=builddir
  15. 3: Builds on multiple CPU architectures by using local cross-compile tools
  16. or some other build farm.
  17. 4: ppc64 is a good architecture for cross-compilation checking because it
  18. tends to use `unsigned long' for 64-bit quantities.
  19. 5: Check your patch for general style as detailed in
  20. Documentation/CodingStyle. Check for trivial violations with the
  21. patch style checker prior to submission (scripts/checkpatch.pl).
  22. You should be able to justify all violations that remain in
  23. your patch.
  24. 6: Any new or modified CONFIG options don't muck up the config menu.
  25. 7: All new Kconfig options have help text.
  26. 8: Has been carefully reviewed with respect to relevant Kconfig
  27. combinations. This is very hard to get right with testing -- brainpower
  28. pays off here.
  29. 9: Check cleanly with sparse.
  30. 10: Use 'make checkstack' and 'make namespacecheck' and fix any problems
  31. that they find. Note: checkstack does not point out problems explicitly,
  32. but any one function that uses more than 512 bytes on the stack is a
  33. candidate for change.
  34. 11: Include kernel-doc to document global kernel APIs. (Not required for
  35. static functions, but OK there also.) Use 'make htmldocs' or 'make
  36. mandocs' to check the kernel-doc and fix any issues.
  37. 12: Has been tested with CONFIG_PREEMPT, CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT,
  38. CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB, CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC, CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES,
  39. CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK, CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC_SLEEP, CONFIG_PROVE_RCU
  40. and CONFIG_DEBUG_OBJECTS_RCU_HEAD all simultaneously enabled.
  41. 13: Has been build- and runtime tested with and without CONFIG_SMP and
  42. CONFIG_PREEMPT.
  43. 14: If the patch affects IO/Disk, etc: has been tested with and without
  44. CONFIG_LBDAF.
  45. 15: All codepaths have been exercised with all lockdep features enabled.
  46. 16: All new /proc entries are documented under Documentation/
  47. 17: All new kernel boot parameters are documented in
  48. Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt.
  49. 18: All new module parameters are documented with MODULE_PARM_DESC()
  50. 19: All new userspace interfaces are documented in Documentation/ABI/.
  51. See Documentation/ABI/README for more information.
  52. Patches that change userspace interfaces should be CCed to
  53. linux-api@vger.kernel.org.
  54. 20: Check that it all passes `make headers_check'.
  55. 21: Has been checked with injection of at least slab and page-allocation
  56. failures. See Documentation/fault-injection/.
  57. If the new code is substantial, addition of subsystem-specific fault
  58. injection might be appropriate.
  59. 22: Newly-added code has been compiled with `gcc -W' (use "make
  60. EXTRA_CFLAGS=-W"). This will generate lots of noise, but is good for
  61. finding bugs like "warning: comparison between signed and unsigned".
  62. 23: Tested after it has been merged into the -mm patchset to make sure
  63. that it still works with all of the other queued patches and various
  64. changes in the VM, VFS, and other subsystems.
  65. 24: All memory barriers {e.g., barrier(), rmb(), wmb()} need a comment in the
  66. source code that explains the logic of what they are doing and why.
  67. 25: If any ioctl's are added by the patch, then also update
  68. Documentation/ioctl/ioctl-number.txt.
  69. 26: If your modified source code depends on or uses any of the kernel
  70. APIs or features that are related to the following kconfig symbols,
  71. then test multiple builds with the related kconfig symbols disabled
  72. and/or =m (if that option is available) [not all of these at the
  73. same time, just various/random combinations of them]:
  74. CONFIG_SMP, CONFIG_SYSFS, CONFIG_PROC_FS, CONFIG_INPUT, CONFIG_PCI,
  75. CONFIG_BLOCK, CONFIG_PM, CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ,
  76. CONFIG_NET, CONFIG_INET=n (but latter with CONFIG_NET=y)