1 8: FOR MORE INFORMATION
3 There are numerous sources of information on Linux kernel development and
4 related topics. First among those will always be the Documentation
5 directory found in the kernel source distribution. The top-level HOWTO
6 file is an important starting point; SubmittingPatches and
7 SubmittingDrivers are also something which all kernel developers should
8 read. Many internal kernel APIs are documented using the kerneldoc
9 mechanism; "make htmldocs" or "make pdfdocs" can be used to generate those
10 documents in HTML or PDF format (though the version of TeX shipped by some
11 distributions runs into internal limits and fails to process the documents
14 Various web sites discuss kernel development at all levels of detail. Your
15 author would like to humbly suggest http://lwn.net/ as a source;
16 information on many specific kernel topics can be found via the LWN kernel
19 http://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/
21 Beyond that, a valuable resource for kernel developers is:
23 http://kernelnewbies.org/
25 And, of course, one should not forget http://kernel.org/, the definitive
26 location for kernel release information.
28 There are a number of books on kernel development:
30 Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition (Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro
31 Rubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman). Online at
32 http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/.
34 Linux Kernel Development (Robert Love).
36 Understanding the Linux Kernel (Daniel Bovet and Marco Cesati).
38 All of these books suffer from a common fault, though: they tend to be
39 somewhat obsolete by the time they hit the shelves, and they have been on
40 the shelves for a while now. Still, there is quite a bit of good
41 information to be found there.
43 Documentation for git can be found at:
45 http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
47 http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html
52 Congratulations to anybody who has made it through this long-winded
53 document. Hopefully it has provided a helpful understanding of how the
54 Linux kernel is developed and how you can participate in that process.
56 In the end, it's the participation that matters. Any open source software
57 project is no more than the sum of what its contributors put into it. The
58 Linux kernel has progressed as quickly and as well as it has because it has
59 been helped by an impressively large group of developers, all of whom are
60 working to make it better. The kernel is a premier example of what can be
61 done when thousands of people work together toward a common goal.
63 The kernel can always benefit from a larger developer base, though. There
64 is always more work to do. But, just as importantly, most other
65 participants in the Linux ecosystem can benefit through contributing to the
66 kernel. Getting code into the mainline is the key to higher code quality,
67 lower maintenance and distribution costs, a higher level of influence over
68 the direction of kernel development, and more. It is a situation where
69 everybody involved wins. Fire up your editor and come join us; you will be