Re: Can't seem to find a maintainer for init/* files

From: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
To: Paulo Almeida <paulo.miguel.almeida.rodenas@gmail.com>
Cc: kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org
Subject: Re: Can't seem to find a maintainer for init/* files
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2019 18:32:05 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20191018223205.GC6978@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMLg8QgejaXgeDH83wdCt_-VEE4w4a1wntwrs+UXiehfzSNWsA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 10:33:00AM +1300, Paulo Almeida wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I was reading the KernelJanitor/Todo webpage and found the printk-related
> task that had to be done.
> 
> I eventually came across this piece of code that led me to 2 questions that
> I couldn't answer myself
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blame/master/init/do_mounts.c#L434-L455
> 
> 1 - This specific code block has been around for quite some time and many
> additions using the correct printk(KERN_* were made after it was written.
> Does that mean that this code block is an exception and should be left
> as-is for some technical reason? Or, people have somehow forgotten about it
> and I finally found something to do? :)
> 
> 2 - I took a look at the https://www.kernel.org/doc/linux/MAINTAINERS list
> and their respective folders/repos and couldn't find out who would be the
> person who I should eventually send the patches to. Is there any
> "fallthrough" maintainer when there isn't one specified? (Please put me
> straight if I'm not seeing things from the right angle)

Run scripts/get_maintainer.pl on any file and it will tell you where to
send changes to:
	$ ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --file init/do_mounts.c
	Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> (commit_signer:7/9=78%,authored:5/9=56%,added_lines:7/44=16%,removed_lines:27/32=84%)
	David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> (commit_signer:3/9=33%,authored:2/9=22%,added_lines:5/44=11%,removed_lines:5/32=16%)
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> (commit_signer:2/9=22%)
	Nikolaus Voss <nikolaus.voss@loewensteinmedical.de> (commit_signer:1/9=11%,authored:1/9=11%,added_lines:31/44=70%)
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> (commit_signer:1/9=11%,authored:1/9=11%)
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org (open list)

But don't do janitorial cleanup on those files as a "first task".  That
is what the drivers/staging/ directory is for, don't mess with core
kernel files unless you have experience doing kernel changes, as the
learning curve needs to be gotten over first.

good luck!

greg k-h

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