1Linux Kernel patch submission checklist 2~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3 4Here are some basic things that developers should do if they want to see their 5kernel patch submissions accepted more quickly. 6 7These are all above and beyond the documentation that is provided in 8Documentation/SubmittingPatches and elsewhere regarding submitting Linux 9kernel patches. 10 11 121: If you use a facility then #include the file that defines/declares 13 that facility. Don't depend on other header files pulling in ones 14 that you use. 15 162: Builds cleanly with applicable or modified CONFIG options =y, =m, and 17 =n. No gcc warnings/errors, no linker warnings/errors. 18 192b: Passes allnoconfig, allmodconfig 20 212c: Builds successfully when using O=builddir 22 233: Builds on multiple CPU architectures by using local cross-compile tools 24 or some other build farm. 25 264: ppc64 is a good architecture for cross-compilation checking because it 27 tends to use `unsigned long' for 64-bit quantities. 28 295: Check your patch for general style as detailed in 30 Documentation/CodingStyle. Check for trivial violations with the 31 patch style checker prior to submission (scripts/checkpatch.pl). 32 You should be able to justify all violations that remain in 33 your patch. 34 356: Any new or modified CONFIG options don't muck up the config menu. 36 377: All new Kconfig options have help text. 38 398: Has been carefully reviewed with respect to relevant Kconfig 40 combinations. This is very hard to get right with testing -- brainpower 41 pays off here. 42 439: Check cleanly with sparse. 44 4510: Use 'make checkstack' and 'make namespacecheck' and fix any problems 46 that they find. Note: checkstack does not point out problems explicitly, 47 but any one function that uses more than 512 bytes on the stack is a 48 candidate for change. 49 5011: Include kernel-doc to document global kernel APIs. (Not required for 51 static functions, but OK there also.) Use 'make htmldocs' or 'make 52 mandocs' to check the kernel-doc and fix any issues. 53 5412: Has been tested with CONFIG_PREEMPT, CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT, 55 CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB, CONFIG_DEBUG_PAGEALLOC, CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES, 56 CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK, CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC_SLEEP, CONFIG_PROVE_RCU 57 and CONFIG_DEBUG_OBJECTS_RCU_HEAD all simultaneously enabled. 58 5913: Has been build- and runtime tested with and without CONFIG_SMP and 60 CONFIG_PREEMPT. 61 6214: If the patch affects IO/Disk, etc: has been tested with and without 63 CONFIG_LBDAF. 64 6515: All codepaths have been exercised with all lockdep features enabled. 66 6716: All new /proc entries are documented under Documentation/ 68 6917: All new kernel boot parameters are documented in 70 Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt. 71 7218: All new module parameters are documented with MODULE_PARM_DESC() 73 7419: All new userspace interfaces are documented in Documentation/ABI/. 75 See Documentation/ABI/README for more information. 76 Patches that change userspace interfaces should be CCed to 77 linux-api@vger.kernel.org. 78 7920: Check that it all passes `make headers_check'. 80 8121: Has been checked with injection of at least slab and page-allocation 82 failures. See Documentation/fault-injection/. 83 84 If the new code is substantial, addition of subsystem-specific fault 85 injection might be appropriate. 86 8722: Newly-added code has been compiled with `gcc -W' (use "make 88 EXTRA_CFLAGS=-W"). This will generate lots of noise, but is good for 89 finding bugs like "warning: comparison between signed and unsigned". 90 9123: Tested after it has been merged into the -mm patchset to make sure 92 that it still works with all of the other queued patches and various 93 changes in the VM, VFS, and other subsystems. 94 9524: All memory barriers {e.g., barrier(), rmb(), wmb()} need a comment in the 96 source code that explains the logic of what they are doing and why. 97 9825: If any ioctl's are added by the patch, then also update 99 Documentation/ioctl/ioctl-number.txt. 100 10126: If your modified source code depends on or uses any of the kernel 102 APIs or features that are related to the following kconfig symbols, 103 then test multiple builds with the related kconfig symbols disabled 104 and/or =m (if that option is available) [not all of these at the 105 same time, just various/random combinations of them]: 106 107 CONFIG_SMP, CONFIG_SYSFS, CONFIG_PROC_FS, CONFIG_INPUT, CONFIG_PCI, 108 CONFIG_BLOCK, CONFIG_PM, CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ, 109 CONFIG_NET, CONFIG_INET=n (but latter with CONFIG_NET=y) 110