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1 6: FOLLOWTHROUGH
3 At this point, you have followed the guidelines given so far and, with the
4 addition of your own engineering skills, have posted a perfect series of
5 patches. One of the biggest mistakes that even experienced kernel
6 developers can make is to conclude that their work is now done. In truth,
7 posting patches indicates a transition into the next stage of the process,
8 with, possibly, quite a bit of work yet to be done.
10 It is a rare patch which is so good at its first posting that there is no
11 room for improvement. The kernel development process recognizes this fact,
12 and, as a result, is heavily oriented toward the improvement of posted
13 code. You, as the author of that code, will be expected to work with the
14 kernel community to ensure that your code is up to the kernel's quality
15 standards. A failure to participate in this process is quite likely to
16 prevent the inclusion of your patches into the mainline.
19 6.1: WORKING WITH REVIEWERS
21 A patch of any significance will result in a number of comments from other
22 developers as they review the code. Working with reviewers can be, for
23 many developers, the most intimidating part of the kernel development
24 process. Life can be made much easier, though, if you keep a few things in
25 mind:
27 - If you have explained your patch well, reviewers will understand its
28 value and why you went to the trouble of writing it. But that value
29 will not keep them from asking a fundamental question: what will it be
30 like to maintain a kernel with this code in it five or ten years later?
31 Many of the changes you may be asked to make - from coding style tweaks
32 to substantial rewrites - come from the understanding that Linux will
33 still be around and under development a decade from now.
35 - Code review is hard work, and it is a relatively thankless occupation;
36 people remember who wrote kernel code, but there is little lasting fame
37 for those who reviewed it. So reviewers can get grumpy, especially when
38 they see the same mistakes being made over and over again. If you get a
39 review which seems angry, insulting, or outright offensive, resist the
40 impulse to respond in kind. Code review is about the code, not about
41 the people, and code reviewers are not attacking you personally.
43 - Similarly, code reviewers are not trying to promote their employers'
44 agendas at the expense of your own. Kernel developers often expect to
45 be working on the kernel years from now, but they understand that their
46 employer could change. They truly are, almost without exception,
47 working toward the creation of the best kernel they can; they are not
48 trying to create discomfort for their employers' competitors.
50 What all of this comes down to is that, when reviewers send you comments,
51 you need to pay attention to the technical observations that they are
52 making. Do not let their form of expression or your own pride keep that
53 from happening. When you get review comments on a patch, take the time to
54 understand what the reviewer is trying to say. If possible, fix the things
55 that the reviewer is asking you to fix. And respond back to the reviewer:
56 thank them, and describe how you will answer their questions.
58 Note that you do not have to agree with every change suggested by
59 reviewers. If you believe that the reviewer has misunderstood your code,
60 explain what is really going on. If you have a technical objection to a
61 suggested change, describe it and justify your solution to the problem. If
62 your explanations make sense, the reviewer will accept them. Should your
63 explanation not prove persuasive, though, especially if others start to
64 agree with the reviewer, take some time to think things over again. It can
65 be easy to become blinded by your own solution to a problem to the point
66 that you don't realize that something is fundamentally wrong or, perhaps,
67 you're not even solving the right problem.
69 One fatal mistake is to ignore review comments in the hope that they will
70 go away. They will not go away. If you repost code without having
71 responded to the comments you got the time before, you're likely to find
72 that your patches go nowhere.
74 Speaking of reposting code: please bear in mind that reviewers are not
75 going to remember all the details of the code you posted the last time
76 around. So it is always a good idea to remind reviewers of previously
77 raised issues and how you dealt with them; the patch changelog is a good
78 place for this kind of information. Reviewers should not have to search
79 through list archives to familiarize themselves with what was said last
80 time; if you help them get a running start, they will be in a better mood
81 when they revisit your code.
83 What if you've tried to do everything right and things still aren't going
84 anywhere? Most technical disagreements can be resolved through discussion,
85 but there are times when somebody simply has to make a decision. If you
86 honestly believe that this decision is going against you wrongly, you can
87 always try appealing to a higher power. As of this writing, that higher
88 power tends to be Andrew Morton. Andrew has a great deal of respect in the
89 kernel development community; he can often unjam a situation which seems to
90 be hopelessly blocked. Appealing to Andrew should not be done lightly,
91 though, and not before all other alternatives have been explored. And bear
92 in mind, of course, that he may not agree with you either.
95 6.2: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
97 If a patch is considered to be a good thing to add to the kernel, and once
98 most of the review issues have been resolved, the next step is usually
99 entry into a subsystem maintainer's tree. How that works varies from one
100 subsystem to the next; each maintainer has his or her own way of doing
101 things. In particular, there may be more than one tree - one, perhaps,
102 dedicated to patches planned for the next merge window, and another for
103 longer-term work.
105 For patches applying to areas for which there is no obvious subsystem tree
106 (memory management patches, for example), the default tree often ends up
107 being -mm. Patches which affect multiple subsystems can also end up going
108 through the -mm tree.
110 Inclusion into a subsystem tree can bring a higher level of visibility to a
111 patch. Now other developers working with that tree will get the patch by
112 default. Subsystem trees typically feed into -mm and linux-next as well,
113 making their contents visible to the development community as a whole. At
114 this point, there's a good chance that you will get more comments from a
115 new set of reviewers; these comments need to be answered as in the previous
116 round.
118 What may also happen at this point, depending on the nature of your patch,
119 is that conflicts with work being done by others turn up. In the worst
120 case, heavy patch conflicts can result in some work being put on the back
121 burner so that the remaining patches can be worked into shape and merged.
122 Other times, conflict resolution will involve working with the other
123 developers and, possibly, moving some patches between trees to ensure that
124 everything applies cleanly. This work can be a pain, but count your
125 blessings: before the advent of the linux-next tree, these conflicts often
126 only turned up during the merge window and had to be addressed in a hurry.
127 Now they can be resolved at leisure, before the merge window opens.
129 Some day, if all goes well, you'll log on and see that your patch has been
130 merged into the mainline kernel. Congratulations! Once the celebration is
131 complete (and you have added yourself to the MAINTAINERS file), though, it
132 is worth remembering an important little fact: the job still is not done.
133 Merging into the mainline brings its own challenges.
135 To begin with, the visibility of your patch has increased yet again. There
136 may be a new round of comments from developers who had not been aware of
137 the patch before. It may be tempting to ignore them, since there is no
138 longer any question of your code being merged. Resist that temptation,
139 though; you still need to be responsive to developers who have questions or
140 suggestions.
142 More importantly, though: inclusion into the mainline puts your code into
143 the hands of a much larger group of testers. Even if you have contributed
144 a driver for hardware which is not yet available, you will be surprised by
145 how many people will build your code into their kernels. And, of course,
146 where there are testers, there will be bug reports.
148 The worst sort of bug reports are regressions. If your patch causes a
149 regression, you'll find an uncomfortable number of eyes upon you;
150 regressions need to be fixed as soon as possible. If you are unwilling or
151 unable to fix the regression (and nobody else does it for you), your patch
152 will almost certainly be removed during the stabilization period. Beyond
153 negating all of the work you have done to get your patch into the mainline,
154 having a patch pulled as the result of a failure to fix a regression could
155 well make it harder for you to get work merged in the future.
157 After any regressions have been dealt with, there may be other, ordinary
158 bugs to deal with. The stabilization period is your best opportunity to
159 fix these bugs and ensure that your code's debut in a mainline kernel
160 release is as solid as possible. So, please, answer bug reports, and fix
161 the problems if at all possible. That's what the stabilization period is
162 for; you can start creating cool new patches once any problems with the old
163 ones have been taken care of.
165 And don't forget that there are other milestones which may also create bug
166 reports: the next mainline stable release, when prominent distributors pick
167 up a version of the kernel containing your patch, etc. Continuing to
168 respond to these reports is a matter of basic pride in your work. If that
169 is insufficient motivation, though, it's also worth considering that the
170 development community remembers developers who lose interest in their code
171 after it's merged. The next time you post a patch, they will be evaluating
172 it with the assumption that you will not be around to maintain it
173 afterward.
176 6.3: OTHER THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN
178 One day, you may open your mail client and see that somebody has mailed you
179 a patch to your code. That is one of the advantages of having your code
180 out there in the open, after all. If you agree with the patch, you can
181 either forward it on to the subsystem maintainer (be sure to include a
182 proper From: line so that the attribution is correct, and add a signoff of
183 your own), or send an Acked-by: response back and let the original poster
184 send it upward.
186 If you disagree with the patch, send a polite response explaining why. If
187 possible, tell the author what changes need to be made to make the patch
188 acceptable to you. There is a certain resistance to merging patches which
189 are opposed by the author and maintainer of the code, but it only goes so
190 far. If you are seen as needlessly blocking good work, those patches will
191 eventually flow around you and get into the mainline anyway. In the Linux
192 kernel, nobody has absolute veto power over any code. Except maybe Linus.
194 On very rare occasion, you may see something completely different: another
195 developer posts a different solution to your problem. At that point,
196 chances are that one of the two patches will not be merged, and "mine was
197 here first" is not considered to be a compelling technical argument. If
198 somebody else's patch displaces yours and gets into the mainline, there is
199 really only one way to respond: be pleased that your problem got solved and
200 get on with your work. Having one's work shoved aside in this manner can
201 be hurtful and discouraging, but the community will remember your reaction
202 long after they have forgotten whose patch actually got merged.