question on patch submission

[greg@kroah.com (Greg KH)]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 09:49:05PM +0900, Michael Mera wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As part of the eudyptula challenge I submitted a coding style patch on
> staging (that you can find here: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/4/28/148)
> 
> I had read beforehand the submission guidelines, but I still have some
> questions which I think are more appropriate posted here than as an
> answer to the patch thread:
> 
> - the patch is clear with "checkpatch.pl --strict", but there are some
>   tabs in the middle of the line. In my editor and apparently with
>   checkpatch.pl those tabs are used for alignment (so spend less than 8
>   characters) so that the total of the line in less than 80 characters.
>   In the submitted patch however, due to the +- at the beginning of the
>   line they appear larger and thus the line in more than 80 character.
> 
>   My question is: Should I consider the patch clean or interpret the
>   guideline "tabs are 8 characters" strictly (and not tabs "at the
>   beginning on the line" are 8 characters)?

tabs are always intrepted at 8 character "stops" for kernel development.
Look at other patches on the mailing list and in your editor, all should
be fine when you create it using git.

> - when I make modification to the patch message but not the diff lines,
>   should I still increment the patch version, or rather maybe resend it
>   with something like RESEND in the subject?

Yes, make it a new version, as the version is the combination of both.
Make it trivially easy for a maintainer to know which version to accept.
Marking it as "RESEND" implies that either patch submission could be
accepted, but marking it with a version is explicit as to which you
should use.

thanks,

greg k-h