Bad Patches and Issues with other devolopers

[Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:48:14 +0100, Anuz Pratap Singh Tomar said:

> oh man you have gained prominence in vger?
> They have banned you from vger.

Wow. I've been around for a dozen years or so, and can't remember *that* ever
happening before. That takes some *major* doing, and could take literally years
to straighten out.  How to approach that?

0) Nick can't screw up again. *AT ALL*. Patches have to be clean and correct on
the first try, and posting something stupid or failing to listen and implement
maintainer suggestions will probably be fatal.  Yes, that *does* mean that
posting a "great new idea" that's half-baked or worse will probably be fatal,
which means you should bounce the idea off several other people who actually
know the kernel.  I see a *lot* of "this would be great if" ideas that aren't
actually good ideas - either the kernel would have to be majorly re-written for
little gain, or the idea is contrary to the way things are done in the kernel,
or there's hidden reasons we don't already do it...

1) Pick *one* (or at most two) sub-lists, subscribe, and *SHUT UP AND READ*.
Resist the temptation to post anything.  Learn.  Pay attention to the
maintainer's comments on other patches - this is how you learn what they want
to see in a patch, and what they *don't* want to see.

2) Once you get an actual handle on what's considered a "good" patch series
for that section of the kernel, *then* start thinking about small patches.

3) Before sending the first few patches, *review* them. Test compile them. Test
boot them.  E-mail them to yourself, and make sure they apply.  Have somebody
else look at them off-list first, to make sure you didn't do something stupid.
Do everything possible to make sure it's *RIGHT* the first time it hits the
sub-list.

After 3-4 years of this, and the start of a record of having correct patches,
the powers that be might consider un-doing a ban....
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 848 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/attachments/20140806/cb128e18/attachment.bin