From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1765081AbYEVAd0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 May 2008 20:33:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1762870AbYEVAcu (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 May 2008 20:32:50 -0400 Received: from yw-out-2324.google.com ([74.125.46.31]:37612 "EHLO yw-out-2324.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1761347AbYEVAcs (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 May 2008 20:32:48 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=Fg4uxdo70/lsnTizSaiOEH7Y5/aLD4IUJ9rXcWIE1GS3R+e/xPz52VdOmk4BtgPhHYAjb4zRy+n7Ey7Kw/UySIm5qDCZZuL2G9QAB1lSVAZWlIE7Bf2Iv2LCRlxk9EdvBpjse+s6J0PPvBghF21P1utV1R9B/Kg15TVx7gM+3DQ= Message-ID: <9a8748490805211732l521f3d81xa34ea1ad6365bf2a@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 02:32:25 +0200 From: "Jesper Juhl" To: "Adrian Bunk" Subject: Re: CFD: linux-wanking@vger.kernel.org (was [PATCH] Standard indentation of arguments) Cc: "Jonathan Corbet" , "Cyrill Gorcunov" , rdunlap@xenotime.net, tytso@mit.edu, hch@infradead.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, davem@davemloft.net, "Andrew Morton" In-Reply-To: <20080522001233.GE16376@cs181133002.pp.htv.fi> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <9a8748490805211306l50b8411ax4462be18c94ca065@mail.gmail.com> <32279.1211401651@vena.lwn.net> <9a8748490805211337q1e7ceab7i80e4820c46f8171b@mail.gmail.com> <9a8748490805211646s5ef93f8ey43ebbc7746fb1a3b@mail.gmail.com> <20080522001233.GE16376@cs181133002.pp.htv.fi> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 2008/5/22 Adrian Bunk : > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 01:46:28AM +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote: >>... >> 2. How to find things to work on as a beginner >>... >> Finding bugs to fix is easy. Here are some ways to find useful work to >> do: >>... > > But fixing them is not so easy... > > Sorry for being destructive, but we do not have easy coding tasks > for newbies. > A) You are not being destructive, you are doing exactely what I hoped people would do, which is comment on my draft so I can make it better :) B) You are absolutely right in saying that fixing bugs is not (always) easy. But it's a fact that many people ask questions along the lines of "where do I start?", "where can I find something useful to work on?", "I want to learn, is there some code that needs attention I can start reading?" and similar. I'm simply trying to help the people who ask that sort of questions by providing them with a source of stuff to attack. Whether or not someone will be able to fix a bug is a different issue to whether or not a person can find somewhere to start getting into kernel development in a useful way. > If it's easy it's already fixed, True, and then again, not always. Do 100 randconfig builds and I'm willing to bet that at least a handful of the compiler errors or warnings you encounter can be fixed by simply including a header, moving an #ifdef, fixing a cast, fixing a printk format string or similar. There are many difficult to fix bugs in the kernel, but there's also still some low-hanging fruit left (and I suspect there will always be). >and dozens of people following your > advice to look at e.g. compile or sparse warnings will only generate > much noise, but they'll have a hard time finding anything they are > capable to fix. > You may be right, but personally I'm not so sure. The kernel is a large project and we have many people who want to get involved but give up when hitting the very first barrier to entry; finding somewhere to start. Sure, there will be some noise, but I would hope that there would also be many good (if somewhat trivial) patches - and once people get one or two trivial patches accepted they may be encouraged to delve in deeper and do more useful work. Those that can't even fix a simple warning or missing include file error will probably give up whether or not we provide this document or not. -- Jesper Juhl Don't top-post http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html Plain text mails only, please http://www.expita.com/nomime.html