On Mon, 2013-09-23 at 12:01 +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> I've written a checkpatch guide for newbies because it seems like they
> make the same mistakes over and over. I intend to put it under
> Documentation/. Could you look it over?
>
>
> Introduction
>
> This document is aimed at new kernel contributors using "checkpatch.pl
> --file".
>
> The first thing to remember is that the aim is not to get rid of every
> checkpatch.pl warning; the aim is to make the code cleaner and more readable.
> The other thing to remember is that checkpatch.pl is not a very smart tool and
> there are mistakes that it misses so keep your eyes open for those as well.
Maybe suggest using
checkpatch.pl --file --fix --strict --types=<specific_type> <file>
mv <file>.EXPERIMENTAL-checkpatch-fixes <file>
git diff <file>
where <specific_types> is one of
For whitespace only changes
SPACING
SPACE_BEFORE_TAB
POINTER_LOCATION
For code changes:
C99_COMMENTS
PREFER_PACKED
PREFER_ALIGNED
AVOID_EXTERNS
PARENTHESIS_ALIGNMENT
> For example, checkpatch.pl could warn about a badly formatted warning message.
> Ask yourself, is the warning message is clear? Is it needed? Could a
> non-privileged user trigger the warning and flood the syslog? Are there
> spelling mistakes? Since Checkpatch.pl has flagged the line as sloppy code,
> there may be multiple mistakes.
>
> In the Linux kernel, we take an enormous pride in our work and we want clean
> code. But the one major drawback to cleanup patches is that they break
> "git blame" so it's not a good idea for newbies to send very trivial cleanup
> patches to the kernel/ directory. It's better to get a little experience in
> the
> drivers/ directory first. The drivers/staging/ directory in particular always
> needs cleanup patches.
I think suggesting working _only_ in the drivers/staging/
directory tree might be better.
Maybe I'll submit some auto-neatening script eventually
and see what you think.
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