Re: [KJ] Introduction...

["Randy.Dunlap" <rddunlap@osdl.org>]

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 I understand that the TODO list on the website is out of date and 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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