Kernel sources: Development

Patches

Patches must be prepared against a specific version of the kernel (typically the current mainline version) - but sometimes, it's necessary to create a patch against linux-next, -mm or a subsystem tree.

Complex modification or additions of functionality should be submitted as a series of patches.

Use scripts/checkpatch.pl to verify the format of a patch.

Mailing patches

Patches should always be sent in plain text format.

Subject line

[PATCH nn/mm] subsys: one-line description of the patch where nn is a counter and mm the number of patches in a series and subsys is the name of the affected subsystem.

nn/mm can be omitted for single standalone patches.

Only one GIT repository branch

The main git repository has one branch only: master.

Before a patch is applied to the Linux repository, if typically goes into on of the other repositories.

Tip tree

The tip tree comprises

x86 architecture
scheduler
locking and atomics
generic interrupt subsystem and interrupt chip drivers
time, timers, timekeeping, NOHZ and related chip drivers
performance counters core architecture support and tooling
CPU hotplug core
RAS core
EFI core, and
RCU

See also kernel/configs/x86_debug.config