Please give advise about my first patch attempt

[Lukas Bulwahn]

Hi Thomas,

On Thu, 27 Aug 2020, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> i am preparing my first patch.
> May i ask for review and advise how to make it acceptable ?
> 
> The patch shall fix an old regression of cdrom and sr drivers.
> Although drivers/cdrom has no mailing list entry in MAINTAINERS, i assume
> that such patches should go to linux-scsi at vger.kernel.org which is listed
> for drivers/scsi/sr*. Right ?
> 
> So the change affects two different subsystems which have the same maintainer
> and have a very close relation. Do i need to split it into two, nevertheless ?
>

I do not think there is a need to split it. Just take all maintainers as 
recipients.

./scripts/get_maintainer.pl  include/linux/cdrom.h
Jens Axboe <axboe at kernel.dk> (maintainer:UNIFORM CDROM DRIVER)
linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org (open list)

./scripts/get_maintainer.pl  drivers/scsi/sr.c
Jens Axboe <axboe at kernel.dk> (maintainer:SCSI CDROM DRIVER)
"James E.J. Bottomley" <jejb at linux.ibm.com> (maintainer:SCSI SUBSYSTEM)
"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen at oracle.com> (maintainer:SCSI 
SUBSYSTEM)
linux-scsi at vger.kernel.org (open list:SCSI CDROM DRIVER)
linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org (open list)

./scripts/get_maintainer.pl  drivers/cdrom/cdrom.c
Jens Axboe <axboe at kernel.dk> (maintainer:UNIFORM CDROM DRIVER)
linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org (open list)


I assume Jens Axboe is going to pick it and forward that to Linus.

> The change is relative to git tag v5.8 of
>   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
> It is not locally committed yet, so i cannot run git format-patch for now.
> I plan to do if i get some approval here.
>

It is probably best to base it on v5.9-rc2 (or -rc3 next week) and check 
if it cleanly applies on the latest linux-next. More on that is in the 
kernel documentation, see how to contribute.


> I tested with three different optical drives at SATA and USB by
>   dd if=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 count=1 of=/dev/null
> Unchanged yields ENOMEDIUM or EIO. Changed yields success.
> 
> Please also tell me if my mailer (used with this mail) would cause problems.
>

I suggest to use an own branch on git, then git format-patch -1, git 
send-email ... <patch>, which usually does what you want without any 
bigger issues.

I cannot comment on the technical stuff, but that what the mailing list is 
good for; so, if you got the tools for submitting a patch set up, just go 
for the mailing lists. Not that too many people care for CDROM drivers 
nowadays, but you will probably get some feedback and maybe you are the 
next maintainer for CDROM drivers when you continue to test CDROM :)


Lukas