Status of kernel-janitors?

Status of kernel-janitors?

[Linus Probert]

Hello,

I've been a long time builder and fiddler of kernel source. Running
self-compiled kernels and pulling in patches before official release
etc. Bog standard for most of you I assume.

I'd love to dedicate some spare to help the project. Like so many
others.

The kernel-janoitors "project" does pop up in various resources such as
kernelnewbies and I think it might have been mentioned in one of the
Linux Foundations free courses. But links to potential homepages seem to
be dead and resources are sometimes dated.

I read somewhere that this has mostly evolved into janitorial work in
drivers/staging. TODOs were mentioned.

So the actual question. In my mind janitorial code work is a good place
to dip ones toes when starting out. Is this the right mailing list to
ask about such things? Any suggestions to find an area where ones
assistance would be welcome?

I'm aware of checkpatch.pl but for many drivers diverging from these
rules seem intentional and just blindly fixing checkpatch warnings are
not helpful to the maintainer.
Open source is a lot of work so the goal would be to be helpful while
not stealing too much attention from concerned parties.

Br,
Linus Probert

Re: Status of kernel-janitors?

[Dan Carpenter]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 02:10:49PM +0200, Linus Probert wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've been a long time builder and fiddler of kernel source. Running
> self-compiled kernels and pulling in patches before official release
> etc. Bog standard for most of you I assume.
> 
> I'd love to dedicate some spare to help the project. Like so many
> others.
> 
> The kernel-janoitors "project" does pop up in various resources such as
> kernelnewbies and I think it might have been mentioned in one of the
> Linux Foundations free courses. But links to potential homepages seem to
> be dead and resources are sometimes dated.
> 
> I read somewhere that this has mostly evolved into janitorial work in
> drivers/staging. TODOs were mentioned.
> 
> So the actual question. In my mind janitorial code work is a good place
> to dip ones toes when starting out. Is this the right mailing list to
> ask about such things? Any suggestions to find an area where ones
> assistance would be welcome?
> 

Starting in driver/staging is good advice.

> I'm aware of checkpatch.pl but for many drivers diverging from these
> rules seem intentional and just blindly fixing checkpatch warnings are
> not helpful to the maintainer.

Yeah.  After a while, you're left with only false positives or
we introduced new rules and the old code is sort of grandfathered
and the maintainers wouldn't appreciate an update.

> Open source is a lot of work so the goal would be to be helpful while
> not stealing too much attention from concerned parties.

I tried to introduce the concept of, if you have an idea but don't
have the time to implement it right away, then write KTODO in your
email so people can search for that and get a list of ideas but it
hasn't really caught on.

regards,
dan carpenter

Re: Status of kernel-janitors?

[Linus Probert]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 03:25:42PM +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 02:10:49PM +0200, Linus Probert wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I've been a long time builder and fiddler of kernel source. Running
> > self-compiled kernels and pulling in patches before official release
> > etc. Bog standard for most of you I assume.
> > 
> > I'd love to dedicate some spare to help the project. Like so many
> > others.
> > 
> > The kernel-janoitors "project" does pop up in various resources such as
> > kernelnewbies and I think it might have been mentioned in one of the
> > Linux Foundations free courses. But links to potential homepages seem to
> > be dead and resources are sometimes dated.
> > 
> > I read somewhere that this has mostly evolved into janitorial work in
> > drivers/staging. TODOs were mentioned.
> > 
> > So the actual question. In my mind janitorial code work is a good place
> > to dip ones toes when starting out. Is this the right mailing list to
> > ask about such things? Any suggestions to find an area where ones
> > assistance would be welcome?
> > 
> 
> Starting in driver/staging is good advice.

I'll start looking around there then. Seems to be a good amount of TODO
files in there. Close to 1-to-1.

> > I'm aware of checkpatch.pl but for many drivers diverging from these
> > rules seem intentional and just blindly fixing checkpatch warnings are
> > not helpful to the maintainer.
> 
> Yeah.  After a while, you're left with only false positives or
> we introduced new rules and the old code is sort of grandfathered
> and the maintainers wouldn't appreciate an update.
> 
> > Open source is a lot of work so the goal would be to be helpful while
> > not stealing too much attention from concerned parties.
> 
> I tried to introduce the concept of, if you have an idea but don't
> have the time to implement it right away, then write KTODO in your
> email so people can search for that and get a list of ideas but it
> hasn't really caught on.

A pity that didn't catch on. Could have served as a good stepping stone
to get some young blood into the project.

> regards,
> dan carpenter
> 

Thank you for the quick reply.