Device drivers are an important entry point into Linux kernel development. The device drivers staging branch is an environment where newbies are welcome and their efforts are fostered.
In this tutorial you will learn some ways to find useful and interesting problems to work on, you will learn how to find tasks that enable you to learn and how to go about contributing your work back to the kernel.
In this tutorial you will learn how to use kernel development tools to find tractable problems to contribute to. These include checkpatch.pl, Sparse, Smatch, and Coccinelle. You will also learn about LKML etiquette (or how not to get flamed), how to write a git changelog message (or how not to get flamed), how to use git to ease your work flow, and how to craft a patch series that is acceptable to the kernel community.
For the last six years Tobin has been chasing the dream of becoming a kernel hacker. He started his kernel hacking 'career' by doing driver patches in staging/. In 2017 he enjoyed a small amount of success when hashing of printk specifier %p landed in v3.15. He spent 2018 predominantly... Read More →
