Questions about development-process

[greg@kroah.com (Greg KH)]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 12:37:39PM -0700, David Matlack wrote:
> I have some questions after reading Documentation/development-process/.
> 
> 1. According to 2.Process, after the merge window closes...
> 
>      Over the next six to ten weeks, only patches which fix problems should
>      be submitted to the mainline.  On occasion a more significant change
>      will be allowed, but such occasions are rare; developers who try to
>      merge new features outside of the merge window tend to get an unfriendly
>      reception.
> 
> So is "submitting to mainline" == "sending patches to LKML"? I'm basically
> confused if the development process is talking about when to send patches or
> just when Linus will merge patches into his tree. (...or both?)

THe merge window is for kernel subsystem maintainers, as a "normal"
developer, you usually don't have to worry about that at all.

> 2. How does the development process apply to the staging directory? Can I send
> new features and bug fixes alike for drivers/staging/X at any time or should I
> separate out patches as:
>   - new features for drivers/staging/X sent only during merge window
>   - bug fixes sent whenever

You can send either whenever, and it's up to the maintainer as to when
to send them to Linus.  Hopefully the staging tree maintainer is smart
enough to know which to send to which :)

thanks,

greg k-h