how do you find the subsystem of a file?

[Greg KH]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2021 at 12:30:27AM -0700, daniel watson wrote:
> i wrote a patch that got rejected because it did not apply cleanly to
> the tree of greg kh
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/8/18/304
> 
> the file i modified is
> drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/include/rtl8192c_recv.h
> 
> get_maintainer.pl gave me the list of emails to send the patch to,
> and i used it for that purpose.  the file
> Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst says to see the T: entry
> for the subsystem in MAINTAINERS to find the right tree to base the
> patch on.  i tried searching through MAINTAINERS and found that there
> are a few subsystems that start with RTL8*.
> 
> greg kh is listed a few times in MAINTAINERS, so i'm not able to find
> the exact tree to start with by looking for the maintainer.
> 
> is there a systematic way of finding the subsystem, given a file?

Yes, use the tool you already used:

$ ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/include/rtl8192c_recv.h
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org> (supporter:STAGING SUBSYSTEM)
linux-staging at lists.linux.dev (open list:STAGING SUBSYSTEM)
linux-kernel at vger.kernel.org (open list)

That shows this file is in the staging subsystem, and there's the list
to send the patch to, as well as the person you should cc: on it.

> in addition, how do i know what branch to use?  the T: entries have a
> repo, but not a branch name.

You can always ask the subsystem maintainer about what branch to use if
you have a question.

thanks,

greg k-h