Friday, April 17, 2020

How to submit a patch to the linux kernel

How to submit a patch to the linux kernel



On Ubuntu/Debian you probably need sudo apt-get install git-email first, unless you want to do it entirely manually (uuh).

git log
git format-patch HEAD~
scripts/checkpatch.pl 0001-scripts-config-allow-colons-in-option-strings-for-se.patch
scripts/get_maintainer.pl
git send-email 0001-scripts-config-allow-colons-in-option-strings-for-se.patch

You could use git format-patch --cover-letter HEAD~ to generate a blank "introductory" email in order to describe your post further than with the sole summary of the patch itself.

Here is a ~/.gitconfig example for git to send emails:
[sendemail]
  ; setup for using git send-email; prompts for password
  smtpuser = jf@gmail.com
  smtpserver = smtp.googlemail.com
  smtpencryption = tls
  smtpserverport = 587

Note: you might have to create a specific Google "application password" for the provided pseudo "login" prompt that git will print.

The tool ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl in linux will help you identify the recipients. It does this very nicely, instead of having to guess from the MAINTAINERS file.

Finally, to submit the real thing to the linux list https://lkml.org/:
git send-email --cc-cmd='./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --norolestats 0001-scripts-config-allow-colons-in-option-strings-for-se.patch' 0001-scripts-config-allow-colons-in-option-strings-for-se.patch

It will end up, e.g. as https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/4/10/383 

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