Re: [PATCH] staging: octeon: fixed few coding style warnings

[Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>]

On Wednesday 14 October 2015 14:04:00 David Daney wrote:
> On 10/14/2015 01:58 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Wednesday 14 October 2015 08:47:44 David Daney wrote:
> >> On 10/14/2015 07:06 AM, Sakshi Bansal wrote:
> >>> Fixed allignment issues and line over 80 characters
> >>
> >> Use spell checking on 'allignment'
> >>
> >> But that is not the main problem with the patch...
> >>
> >>
> >> You are changing things other than white space and comment formatting,
> >> can you tell us on which platforms the patch was tested to verify that
> >> you didn't break anything?
> >
> > In general a good advice, but for trivial whitespace or comment
> > changes, this is normally not necessary. Compile-testing a patch
> > as you say is normally expected, if only to avoid embarrassing
> > complaints if it does break later.
> >
> > For drivers that are not enabled in the x86 allmodconfig, it sure
> > helps to say something like "Compile-tested using MIPS cross toolchain
> > from https://www.kernel.org/pub/tools/crosstool/". Even better would
> > be to send a fix to decouple the driver from asm/octeon/*.h
> > to make it build on all architectures, but that is much more work
> > than I'd expect for a trivial patch.
> 
> There is no point in such a patch.  We know, a priori, that there will 
> *never* be a non-MIPS system with this hardware.

We generally like to have all drivers compilable using COMPILE_TEST
across all architectures, as that enables automated build regression
tests from services like coverity or the 0-day build tester.

It also makes it much easier for normal developers to test changes
when they can verify them using a single toolchain and allmodconfig.

	Arnd