[KJ] Introduction...

[KJ] Introduction...

[Stephen Biggs]

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Greetings all,

Domen Puncer knows me as "GuestMe" on the IRC channel.

I would like to introduce myself as someone who wishes to join the 
kernel-janitors team in order to help out. My hardware is pretty much 
run-of-the-mill: P4P-800VM motherboard, Pentium IV 2.4GHz, dual-boot 
with Windows, Fedora Core 3 fully updated as of yesterday, including 
kernel, 2 IDE drives and one SATA drive, one of the IDE drives being my 
Linux disk, two DVD drives, one of which writes single-layer DVD, 1394 
video capture card and an Adaptec SCSI card for a negative scanner.

Domen has told me that there are only 5 of you?

I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and needs 
updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority tasks to 
do that no one has started doing?



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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Jim Nelson]

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Stephen Biggs wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> Domen Puncer knows me as "GuestMe" on the IRC channel.
> 
> I would like to introduce myself as someone who wishes to join the 
> kernel-janitors team in order to help out. My hardware is pretty much 
> run-of-the-mill: P4P-800VM motherboard, Pentium IV 2.4GHz, dual-boot 
> with Windows, Fedora Core 3 fully updated as of yesterday, including 
> kernel, 2 IDE drives and one SATA drive, one of the IDE drives being my 
> Linux disk, two DVD drives, one of which writes single-layer DVD, 1394 
> video capture card and an Adaptec SCSI card for a negative scanner.
> 
> Domen has told me that there are only 5 of you?
> 

Dunno.  As regular contributors, maybe.  More people pop in every once in awhile 
(like myself).

> I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and needs 
> updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority tasks to 
> do that no one has started doing?
> 

Fixing compile warnings.  Especially on unmaintained drivers.  A `make 
allyesconfig && make bzImage 2>warnings.txt` is a great way to start.  There's 
running compiles with the gcc 4 beta, and fixing the new compile warnings that 
generates.  There's also learning how to use sparse, and tackling what it turns up 
(I'm not to that level, tho...).  People are working on them IIRC, but there's a 
lot of work to be done.

Work off of -mm, since most of the janitorial work will go through Andrew Morton's 
series for awhile before being pushed into mainline.  I've had a few times when 
I've duplicated work in the -mm tree, only finding out *after* I sent the patches...

There's always whitespace cleanup.  Unglamorous but helpful.  Not everyone doing 
cleanup works through this mailing list (Adrian Bunk is the most prolific on LKML) 
but it is a good place to start kernel work.

Welcome.

Jim



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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Stephen Biggs]

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On 6 Feb 2005 at 21:51, Jim Nelson wrote:

> Stephen Biggs wrote:
> > Greetings all,
> > 
> > Domen Puncer knows me as "GuestMe" on the IRC channel.
> > 
> > I would like to introduce myself as someone who wishes to join the 
> > kernel-janitors team in order to help out. My hardware is pretty much 
> > run-of-the-mill: P4P-800VM motherboard, Pentium IV 2.4GHz, dual-boot 
> > with Windows, Fedora Core 3 fully updated as of yesterday, including 
> > kernel, 2 IDE drives and one SATA drive, one of the IDE drives being my 
> > Linux disk, two DVD drives, one of which writes single-layer DVD, 1394 
> > video capture card and an Adaptec SCSI card for a negative scanner.
> > 
> > Domen has told me that there are only 5 of you?
> > 
> 
> Dunno.  As regular contributors, maybe.  More people pop in every once in awhile 
> (like myself).

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the reply.

> 
> > I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and needs 
> > updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority tasks to 
> > do that no one has started doing?
> > 
> 
> Fixing compile warnings.  Especially on unmaintained drivers.  A `make 
> allyesconfig && make bzImage 2>warnings.txt` is a great way to start.

I will try it with cygwin, then, once I have a patch, I'll move it over 
to Linux and make sure it does what I think it should do before I submit. 
 
>  There's 
> running compiles with the gcc 4 beta, and fixing the new compile warnings that 
> generates.

Isn't this already being done by one or more people?  I have seen this in 
the archives and I don't want to duplicate work, even though this sounds 
interesting.  Can someone advise and help me coordinate this task?

>  There's also learning how to use sparse, and tackling what it turns up 

> (I'm not to that level, tho...).  People are working on them IIRC, but there's a 
> lot of work to be done.

This is my question... all I see is the TODO list which, IMHO, doesn't 
show the huge amount of work to do that your above statement seems to 
imply.

> 
> Work off of -mm, since most of the janitorial work will go through Andrew Morton's 
> series for awhile before being pushed into mainline.  I've had a few times when 
> I've duplicated work in the -mm tree, only finding out *after* I sent the patches...

Ok, so how do I do that?

I am assuming that  
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/ is where 
I find the -mm stuff?  "akpm" is Andrew Morton?

Ok, so I download the latest patch (which right now is 
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-
rc3/2.6.11-rc3-mm1/2.6.11-rc3-mm1.gz.

Then I download the latest testing kernel with the release that matches 
the above patch: 
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.11-
rc3.tar.gz, apply the patch and go for it.

Do I have it right?

> 
> There's always whitespace cleanup.  Unglamorous but helpful.  Not everyone doing 
> cleanup works through this mailing list (Adrian Bunk is the most prolific on LKML) 
> but it is a good place to start kernel work.
> 
> Welcome.

Thanks much!

Steve



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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Jim Nelson]

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Stephen Biggs wrote:
>>>I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and needs 
>>>updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority tasks to 
>>>do that no one has started doing?
>>>
>>
>>Fixing compile warnings.  Especially on unmaintained drivers.  A `make 
>>allyesconfig && make bzImage 2>warnings.txt` is a great way to start.
> 
> 
> I will try it with cygwin, then, once I have a patch, I'll move it over 
> to Linux and make sure it does what I think it should do before I submit. 
>  

Don't limit yourself to x86.  There are less people looking at the less-popular 
architectures.  Only problem is getting a working cross-compiler.  That's another 
challenge I'm working my way up to.

> 
>> There's 
>>running compiles with the gcc 4 beta, and fixing the new compile warnings that 
>>generates.
> 
> 
> Isn't this already being done by one or more people?  I have seen this in 
> the archives and I don't want to duplicate work, even though this sounds 
> interesting.  Can someone advise and help me coordinate this task?
> 

IIRC, it comes up with thousands of warnings - typecasts, etc.

> 
>> There's also learning how to use sparse, and tackling what it turns up 
> 
> 
>>(I'm not to that level, tho...).  People are working on them IIRC, but there's a 
>>lot of work to be done.
> 
> 
> This is my question... all I see is the TODO list which, IMHO, doesn't 
> show the huge amount of work to do that your above statement seems to 
> imply.
> 

My experience is that there are not enough people doing it to have to worry 
overmuch about running into someone else's work.  Who knows, your work might be 
better than what someone else submitted, and might be accepted in its place.

> 
>>Work off of -mm, since most of the janitorial work will go through Andrew Morton's 
>>series for awhile before being pushed into mainline.  I've had a few times when 
>>I've duplicated work in the -mm tree, only finding out *after* I sent the patches...
> 
> 
> Ok, so how do I do that?
> 
> I am assuming that  
> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/ is where 
> I find the -mm stuff?  "akpm" is Andrew Morton?
> 

Or the main www.kernel.org page - listed at the bottom of the releases.

akpm is Andrew Morton - the 2.6 maintainer.  -mm is always more experimental, and 
most patches that might break things end up there for awhile (new arches, new 
filesystems, driver API changes, etc).

> Ok, so I download the latest patch (which right now is 
> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-
> rc3/2.6.11-rc3-mm1/2.6.11-rc3-mm1.gz.
> 
> Then I download the latest testing kernel with the release that matches 
> the above patch: 
> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.11-
> rc3.tar.gz, apply the patch and go for it.
> 
> Do I have it right?
> 

Saves some bandwidth to do it this way:

$ tar xjf linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2
$ bzip2 -d patch-2.6.11-rc3.bz2
$ bzip2 -d 2.6.11-rc3-mm1.bz2
$ mv linux-2.6.10 linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
$ cd linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
$ patch -p1 < ../patch-2.6.11-rc3
$ patch -p1 < ../2.6.11-rc3-mm1
$ make mrproper

That means you only have to download the full versions of each stable release, and 
just get the -rcX and -mmX patches when they are released.  I rebuild the tree 
every -mm release - helps keep cruft and weirdness from popping up when you're 
doing test compiles.

> 
>>There's always whitespace cleanup.  Unglamorous but helpful.  Not everyone doing 
>>cleanup works through this mailing list (Adrian Bunk is the most prolific on LKML) 
>>but it is a good place to start kernel work.
>>
>>Welcome.
> 
> 
> Thanks much!
> 
> Steve
> 

Jim

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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Stephen Biggs]

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On 7 Feb 2005 at 6:26, Jim Nelson wrote:

> Stephen Biggs wrote:
> >>>I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and needs 
> >>>updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority tasks to 
> >>>do that no one has started doing?
> >>>
> >>
> >>Fixing compile warnings.  Especially on unmaintained drivers.  A `make 
> >>allyesconfig && make bzImage 2>warnings.txt` is a great way to start.
> > 
> > 
> > I will try it with cygwin, then, once I have a patch, I'll move it over 
> > to Linux and make sure it does what I think it should do before I submit. 
> >  
> 
> Don't limit yourself to x86.  There are less people looking at the less-popular 
> architectures.  Only problem is getting a working cross-compiler.  That's another 
> challenge I'm working my way up to.

Yes, I just discovered that cygwin is not up to the task at all.  
Straight Linux all the way.

> 
> > 
> >> There's 
> >>running compiles with the gcc 4 beta, and fixing the new compile warnings that 
> >>generates.
> > 
> > 
> > Isn't this already being done by one or more people?  I have seen this in 
> > the archives and I don't want to duplicate work, even though this sounds 
> > interesting.  Can someone advise and help me coordinate this task?
> > 
> 
> IIRC, it comes up with thousands of warnings - typecasts, etc.

Ok, but if I happen to jump into the same area that someone else is 
doing, this is a duplication of work and a pity, wasted effort.  This 
project needs some real management, and no, I am not a project manager; I 
know my limitations ;-)

> 
> > 
> >> There's also learning how to use sparse, and tackling what it turns up 
> > 
> > 
> >>(I'm not to that level, tho...).  People are working on them IIRC, but there's a 
> >>lot of work to be done.
> > 
> > 
> > This is my question... all I see is the TODO list which, IMHO, doesn't 
> > show the huge amount of work to do that your above statement seems to 
> > imply.
> > 
> 
> My experience is that there are not enough people doing it to have to worry 
> overmuch about running into someone else's work.  Who knows, your work might be 
> better than what someone else submitted, and might be accepted in its place.

Ah, perhaps, but the flip side to that is that it doesn't matter if 
either my work or someone else's work is accepted; this is duplicated 
work and effort and, again, a pity.

> 
> > 
> >>Work off of -mm, since most of the janitorial work will go through Andrew Morton's 
> >>series for awhile before being pushed into mainline.  I've had a few times when 
> >>I've duplicated work in the -mm tree, only finding out *after* I sent the patches...
> > 
> > 
> > Ok, so how do I do that?
> > 
> > I am assuming that  
> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/ is where 
> > I find the -mm stuff?  "akpm" is Andrew Morton?
> > 
> 
> Or the main www.kernel.org page - listed at the bottom of the releases.
> 
> akpm is Andrew Morton - the 2.6 maintainer.  -mm is always more experimental, and 
> most patches that might break things end up there for awhile (new arches, new 
> filesystems, driver API changes, etc).
> 
> > Ok, so I download the latest patch (which right now is 
> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-
> > rc3/2.6.11-rc3-mm1/2.6.11-rc3-mm1.gz.
> > 
> > Then I download the latest testing kernel with the release that matches 
> > the above patch: 
> > http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.11-
> > rc3.tar.gz, apply the patch and go for it.
> > 
> > Do I have it right?
> > 
> 
> Saves some bandwidth to do it this way:
> 
> $ tar xjf linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2
> $ bzip2 -d patch-2.6.11-rc3.bz2
> $ bzip2 -d 2.6.11-rc3-mm1.bz2
> $ mv linux-2.6.10 linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ cd linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ patch -p1 < ../patch-2.6.11-rc3
> $ patch -p1 < ../2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ make mrproper
> 
> That means you only have to download the full versions of each stable release, and 
> just get the -rcX and -mmX patches when they are released.  I rebuild the tree 
> every -mm release - helps keep cruft and weirdness from popping up when you're 
> doing test compiles.

Yes, this is a better way.  But, since I started out the other way, I'll 
continue with my way for this release and go to your way next time.

> 
> > 
> >>There's always whitespace cleanup.  Unglamorous but helpful.  Not everyone doing 
> >>cleanup works through this mailing list (Adrian Bunk is the most prolific on LKML) 
> >>but it is a good place to start kernel work.
> >>
> >>Welcome.
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks much!
> > 
> > Steve
> > 
> 
> Jim
> 

Steve


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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Randy.Dunlap]

Jim Nelson wrote:
> Stephen Biggs wrote:
> 
>>>> I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and 
>>>> needs updating... What are some of the outstanding and high-priority 
>>>> tasks to do that no one has started doing?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Fixing compile warnings.  Especially on unmaintained drivers.  A 
>>> `make allyesconfig && make bzImage 2>warnings.txt` is a great way to 
>>> start.
>>
>>
>>
>> I will try it with cygwin, then, once I have a patch, I'll move it 
>> over to Linux and make sure it does what I think it should do before I 
>> submit.  
> 
> 
> Don't limit yourself to x86.  There are less people looking at the 
> less-popular architectures.  Only problem is getting a working 
> cross-compiler.  That's another challenge I'm working my way up to.

In the absence of local cross-compiling, you could also submit your
patch to the PLM tool at  http://www.osdl.org/plm-cgi/plm/
and it will cross-compile the patch on 8 arches.  Latest -mm
as example:
https://www.osdl.org/plm-cgi/plm?module=patch_info&patch_idA51


>>> There's running compiles with the gcc 4 beta, and fixing the new 
>>> compile warnings that generates.
>>
>>
>> Isn't this already being done by one or more people?  I have seen this 
>> in the archives and I don't want to duplicate work, even though this 
>> sounds interesting.  Can someone advise and help me coordinate this task?
>>
> 
> IIRC, it comes up with thousands of warnings - typecasts, etc.
> 
>>
>>> There's also learning how to use sparse, and tackling what it turns up 

http://www.xenotime.net/linux/doc/sparse_howto.txt

and I need to update it to tell how to use more sparse options,
something like:

To use other sparse options, run make like:

make C=1 CHECK="sparse -Wbitwise" all >check.out 2>&1

>>> (I'm not to that level, tho...).  People are working on them IIRC, 
>>> but there's a lot of work to be done.
>>
>>
>> This is my question... all I see is the TODO list which, IMHO, doesn't 
>> show the huge amount of work to do that your above statement seems to 
>> imply.
>>
> 
> My experience is that there are not enough people doing it to have to 
> worry overmuch about running into someone else's work.  Who knows, your 
> work might be better than what someone else submitted, and might be 
> accepted in its place.
> 
>>
>>> Work off of -mm, since most of the janitorial work will go through 
>>> Andrew Morton's series for awhile before being pushed into mainline.  
>>> I've had a few times when I've duplicated work in the -mm tree, only 
>>> finding out *after* I sent the patches...
>>
>>
>>
>> Ok, so how do I do that?
>>
>> I am assuming that  
>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/ is 
>> where I find the -mm stuff?  "akpm" is Andrew Morton?
>>
> 
> Or the main www.kernel.org page - listed at the bottom of the releases.
> 
> akpm is Andrew Morton - the 2.6 maintainer.  -mm is always more 
> experimental, and most patches that might break things end up there for 
> awhile (new arches, new filesystems, driver API changes, etc).
> 
>> Ok, so I download the latest patch (which right now is 
>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-
>> rc3/2.6.11-rc3-mm1/2.6.11-rc3-mm1.gz.
>>
>> Then I download the latest testing kernel with the release that 
>> matches the above patch: 
>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.11-
>> rc3.tar.gz, apply the patch and go for it.
>>
>> Do I have it right?
>>
> 
> Saves some bandwidth to do it this way:
> 
> $ tar xjf linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2
> $ bzip2 -d patch-2.6.11-rc3.bz2
> $ bzip2 -d 2.6.11-rc3-mm1.bz2
> $ mv linux-2.6.10 linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ cd linux-2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ patch -p1 < ../patch-2.6.11-rc3
> $ patch -p1 < ../2.6.11-rc3-mm1
> $ make mrproper
> 
> That means you only have to download the full versions of each stable 
> release, and just get the -rcX and -mmX patches when they are released.  
> I rebuild the tree every -mm release - helps keep cruft and weirdness 
> from popping up when you're doing test compiles.

There are scripts that will download and apply patches for you.
E.g., ketchup from http://www.selenic.com/ketchup/
or grab-kernel-rc from http://developer.osdl.org/rddunlap/scripts/


>>> There's always whitespace cleanup.  Unglamorous but helpful.  Not 
>>> everyone doing cleanup works through this mailing list (Adrian Bunk 
>>> is the most prolific on LKML) but it is a good place to start kernel 
>>> work.

Most of Adrian's recent work is the result of using
"make namespacecheck".  See "make help" in kernel top-level dir.
for all possible make options.

If anyone is interested in stack reduction patches (besides me),
I'm willing to help people understand what needs to be done,
how to do it, etc., i.e., basically tutor people on this on this
mailing list.  (See "make checkstack".)  Same applies to
misused code section references (see "make buildcheck").

-- 
~Randy
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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Jim Nelson]

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Randy.Dunlap wrote:
> 
> In the absence of local cross-compiling, you could also submit your
> patch to the PLM tool at  http://www.osdl.org/plm-cgi/plm/
> and it will cross-compile the patch on 8 arches.  Latest -mm
> as example:
> https://www.osdl.org/plm-cgi/plm?module=patch_info&patch_id=4151
> 

Thanks for the pointer.  One of those things that is very useful to have available.

> If anyone is interested in stack reduction patches (besides me),
> I'm willing to help people understand what needs to be done,
> how to do it, etc., i.e., basically tutor people on this on this
> mailing list.  (See "make checkstack".)  Same applies to
> misused code section references (see "make buildcheck").
> 

Although I don't have infinite time to dedicate to it, I'm up for it.  I'm not 
very experienced, but am willing to flog my brain until I understand it.

After all, I came in here with the intent of learning kernel coding - gotta get 
beyond search-and-replace eventually ;)

Jim

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Re: [KJ] Introduction...

[Francois Romieu]

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Jim Nelson <james4765@cwazy.co.uk> :
[...]
> Don't limit yourself to x86.  There are less people looking at the 
> less-popular architectures.  Only problem is getting a working 
> cross-compiler.  That's another challenge I'm working my way up to.

If you don't mind dumb scripts: http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/cross

{i386/sparc64}-make.sh are not related to the compiler itself but they
help me building kernels.

--
Ueimor

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