From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1762644AbYDNRdd (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:33:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1761534AbYDNRdZ (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:33:25 -0400 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:35340 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755610AbYDNRdY (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:33:24 -0400 Subject: Re: API documentation (was [PATCH] Replace completions with semaphores) From: Peter Zijlstra To: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Bart Van Assche , Matthew Wilcox , Roland Dreier , Ingo Oeser , Daniel Walker , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds , Ingo Molnar In-Reply-To: <16641.1208193124@vena.lwn.net> References: <16641.1208193124@vena.lwn.net> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:33:15 +0200 Message-Id: <1208194395.7129.13.camel@twins> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 11:12 -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote: > Bart Van Assche wrote: > > > The LWN book is getting outdated after all the 2.6 kernel API changes, > > and the page with 2.6 kernel API changes was last updated six months > > ago. Where can a kernel developer find up to date information about > > kernel programming ? > > The failure to update the API changes page is just me not managing to > get around to it. I'll do my best to take care of that in the next few > days. Apologies for that. > > Updating LDD (which isn't really "the LWN book" though it's hosted here) > will take a little longer. I'd like to find a way to produce an LDD4 > with quality at least as good as LDD3, but which doesn't fill the world > with immediately-obsolete bricks of dead trees. Still working on it... Books should only be used to obtain the general picture, any details will be instantly-obsolete, esp at the pace Linux changes. Most of the concepts from LDD3 are still valid, many of the details are dead wrong. Can't we make LDD4 a high level book, explcitly mentioning how people should go about obtaining details? Like go ask on #kernelnewbies and the sorts. The thing I always tell #kernelnewbies people is to look at a related driver (of course that kite doesn't always fly). Another good way to learn stuff is to just read the implementation. A 'trick' that is often useful is to look in git to see how something was changed, provided you knew how to do it some time in the past.