Correct way to submit a patch?

Correct way to submit a patch?

[David Müller (ELSOFT AG)]

Hi

I was wondering what's the correct, proposed way to submit a patch to the
LinuxPPC kernel tree so the patch surely reaches the responsible person and gets
the necessary attention.

What about a special linuxppc-patch mailing list ?
What about a patch tracking system like ARM Linux is using it
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/patches/ ?

Dave


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Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[benh]

>Hi
>
>I was wondering what's the correct, proposed way to submit a patch to the
>LinuxPPC kernel tree so the patch surely reaches the responsible person
>and gets
>the necessary attention.
>
>What about a special linuxppc-patch mailing list ?
>What about a patch tracking system like ARM Linux is using it
>http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/patches/ ?

The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
is affected by it.

We used to have a patch tracker on sourceforge, but we never really
used the way we should have.

Behave with us (PPC maintainers) like you would do with Linus: send us
patches and if it gets ingnored after a while, assume we lost the mail ;)
Unlike Linus, we tend to reply if for some reason we don't want to
apply the patch.

Ben.


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Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[Tom Rini]

On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 01:48:49AM +0100, benh@kernel.crashing.org wrote:
>
> >Hi
> >
> >I was wondering what's the correct, proposed way to submit a patch to the
> >LinuxPPC kernel tree so the patch surely reaches the responsible person
> >and gets
> >the necessary attention.
> >
> >What about a special linuxppc-patch mailing list ?
> >What about a patch tracking system like ARM Linux is using it
> >http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/patches/ ?
>
> The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
> of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
> is affected by it.

This sounds about right, but the MAINTAINERS file is a bit out of
date/useless from time to time.  I do my best to not loose patches sent
to any of the linuxppc- lists (that mailbox is at ~850 saved msgs right
now too..) but occasionally things get pushed beyond my normal viewing
window and aren't seen until I go back and try and clean it out. :)

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[Dave Wolfe]

[ benh@kernel.crashing.org writes: ]
>
> The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
> of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
> is affected by it.

I would suggest that patches be attached to the email. Attachments
can be easily saved off as files, whereas inlined patches must be
extracted from the rest of the message and often get mangled by MUAs.
This is particularly true when trying to retrieve patches from the HTML
archives. Ideally such attachments would also be encoded or use some
other means to prevent them from being mangled during mail transport.

Also note that once you hit 20 or 30 Kb, it's not a patch, so please
don't try to send it to the list. Put it on an FTP or web server and
mail the URL to the list, or mail it privately to the maintainers.

--
 Dave Wolfe

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Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[Tom Rini]

On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:25:03PM -0600, Dave Wolfe wrote:
>
> [ benh@kernel.crashing.org writes: ]
> >
> > The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
> > of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
> > is affected by it.
>
> I would suggest that patches be attached to the email.

Please don't...  I tend to take the Linus approach to this.  I won't
ignore attachments like him tho.. :)

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[hollis]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 09:18:52AM -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:25:03PM -0600, Dave Wolfe wrote:
> >
> > [ benh@kernel.crashing.org writes: ]
> > >
> > > The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
> > > of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
> > > is affected by it.
> >
> > I would suggest that patches be attached to the email.
>
> Please don't...  I tend to take the Linus approach to this.  I won't
> ignore attachments like him tho.. :)

He makes a good point about list archives though... if the patch is inline,
you're left copying and pasting out of a web browser, which has all sorts of
formatting problems (like indentation, "<", etc).

If you send as an attachment (not gzipped, just plain text) then most mail
readers can read it inline *and* it will be saved in pristin form in the list
archives.

-Hollis

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Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[Armin]

hollis@austin.ibm.com wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 09:18:52AM -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
>
>>On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:25:03PM -0600, Dave Wolfe wrote:
>>
>>>[ benh@kernel.crashing.org writes: ]
>>>
>>>>The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
>>>>of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
>>>>is affected by it.
>>>>
>>>I would suggest that patches be attached to the email.
>>>
>>Please don't...  I tend to take the Linus approach to this.  I won't
>>ignore attachments like him tho.. :)
>>
>
> He makes a good point about list archives though... if the patch is inline,
> you're left copying and pasting out of a web browser, which has all sorts of
> formatting problems (like indentation, "<", etc).
>
> If you send as an attachment (not gzipped, just plain text) then most mail
> readers can read it inline *and* it will be saved in pristin form in the list
> archives.
>
> -Hollis
>


It seams to me that if I want someone else to check in my patch, I
certainly don't want to make more work for them.  In my experience,
plain text does not all ways work.

armin


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Re: Correct way to submit a patch?

[Dave Wolfe]

[ Tom Rini writes: ]
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 02:25:03PM -0600, Dave Wolfe wrote:
> >
> > [ benh@kernel.crashing.org writes: ]
> > >
> > > The proper way is to send it to this list, eventually CC'ed to one
> > > of the people in the MAINTAINERS file depending which type of machine
> > > is affected by it.
> >
> > I would suggest that patches be attached to the email.
>
> Please don't...  I tend to take the Linus approach to this.  I won't
> ignore attachments like him tho.. :)

Then you risk mangled patches, and I guarantee that patches in the
archives will be unusable since they're converted to HTML. I'm not fond
of attachments either, but this is one application of them that is
appropriate.

--
 Dave Wolfe

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