Re: Status of kernel-janitors?

[Linus Probert <linus.probert@gmail.com>]

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.