Re: [PATCH] [Coding Style]: misc fixes for fs/ext{3,4}/acl.{c,h} from checkpatch.pl

Paolo Ciarrocchi
2008-01-04T20:04:12Z

On Jan 4, 2008 8:41 PM, Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:
[...]
> > I don't know, because people want to be able to say that they've
> > contributed fixes to the Linux kernel?
>
> My pet theory is that it is similar to the "unsubscribe me"
> cascade effect you sometimes see on mailing lists. One person
> sends a "unsubscribe me" to everybody and then suddenly a lot of
> people think that is the right way to unsubscribe and reply
> with lots of "unsubscribe me too".
>
> So one person sends a cleanup and it gets accepted and suddenly
> other people realize it is very easy to do these cleanups
> (not realizing the hidden costs they have) and then they go on...

Since I'm one of those people that sent "Codying style fixes" patches
I give my contribution to this discussion as well.

I think that _one_ of the reasons that made a few people sent this kind of
patches to the list is because checkpatch.pl is far better then any other
kerneljanitor scripts/easy task and _seems_ to be an easy way to start
understanding the code, creation of patches and process in general.

> I thought we had the janitor project to steer these people into
> more useful directions, but apparently that is not well known
> enough anymore. Perhaps it just needs to be more regularly announced?
>
> Although I must admit I am not 100% happy with kernel-janitors
> either -- e.g. a few times I sent suggestions about easy things
> someone could do to that list, but never heard anything back.
>
> Anyways there are lots of ways to do trivial cleanups in a useful
> way and if people want to do this perhaps they should just
> ask on linux-kernel and people suggest something?

Yes please do that.
Even if fixing errors reported by checkpatch.pl still sounds like a
useful way to spent a couple of hours.
Maybe our mistake was to send the patches to lkml instead of to
trivial@kernel.org
or to kerneljanitors?

I mean, I now understand the rationales behind your complaints but I
don't think it's
good idea to discourage people willing to perform easy task.
They just need guidance in order to be useful.

> My hope here is of course that these trivial changes are primarily
> used as a way to get "the feet wet" to understand the procedures
> for contribuing larger not quite as trivial changes

Agreed.

ciao,
--
Paolo