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Sun, 09 Nov 2025 05:50:09 -0800 (PST) Received: by archie.me (Postfix, from userid 1000) id C2CC342BF679; Sun, 09 Nov 2025 20:50:04 +0700 (WIB) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2025 20:50:04 +0700 From: Bagas Sanjaya To: Swaraj Gaikwad , dev.jain@arm.com Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: Guidance on contributing to MM subsystem Message-ID: References: <20251109141452.7097-1-swarajgaikwad1925@gmail.com> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="o5P0qWO0UkoQwcFB" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20251109141452.7097-1-swarajgaikwad1925@gmail.com> --o5P0qWO0UkoQwcFB Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Nov 09, 2025 at 02:14:50PM +0000, Swaraj Gaikwad wrote: > Hi Dev, > Thank you so much for your reply and for sharing your experience. > I do have some basic understanding of how parts of the MM subsystem work, > but I=E2=80=99m still struggling with how to find meaningful issues or ta= sks to work > on. For example, I=E2=80=99ve been trying to explore various parts of the= code and > read through documentation to get a better grasp of how things fit togeth= er. >=20 > In other open-source projects, like on GitHub, there=E2=80=99s usually an= =E2=80=9CIssues=E2=80=9D > section where contributors can easily find bugs or tasks to work on. In t= he > kernel, should I mainly focus on exploring TODOs, adding selftests, or > improving documentation (especially for new or less-documented parts)? I > also believe branches like mm-unstable and mm-new might have ongoing issu= es > or regressions, but how do developers usually find or detect them? Would > simply building these branches expose such problems through compiler erro= rs, > or should I try building with different configurations (for example, using > defconfig and other configs) to uncover potential issues? >=20 > Even though I=E2=80=99m beginning to understand how different parts of th= e subsystem > interact, I=E2=80=99m not sure how developers usually identify new bugs o= r feature > ideas to work on. Once I understand the code flow better, how can I > effectively find such issues or areas where help is actually needed? I can only speak for the documentation subsystem as I'm regular there. For docs, I'm usually watching linux-next mailing list and looking for new build warnings report there. If the report says htmldocs AND the warnings a= re emitted from Sphinx (look for [docutils] like [1]), I reproduce them locally (make sure to set up the environment per Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst) and fix them (in that case, I submit [2]). In absence of aforementioned, I build htmldocs then wandered through its resulting output to see what formatting improvements I can make and submit (e.g. [3], [4], and [5]). Thanks. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-next/20251106143925.578e411b@canb.auug.o= rg.au/ [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-doc/20251107081300.13033-2-bagasdotme@gm= ail.com/ [3]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-doc/20251103093817.52764-2-bagasdotme@gm= ail.com/ [4]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-doc/20251017064525.28836-2-bagasdotme@gm= ail.com/ [5]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-doc/20251013095630.34235-2-bagasdotme@gm= ail.com/ --=20 An old man doll... just what I always wanted! - Clara --o5P0qWO0UkoQwcFB Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEABYKAB0WIQSSYQ6Cy7oyFNCHrUH2uYlJVVFOowUCaRCcCAAKCRD2uYlJVVFO o4zEAQDYl4qSeekBOaAB9zxtXScuTFp6kvkLpXjcPuU8fui+UQEA6ZcPvcSCi55k Sqqw2oAAzD39cMDepBDho0hFAAPXrAw= =/YTl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --o5P0qWO0UkoQwcFB--