Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 21 Dec 2004 02:25:54 +0100 (CET) | From | Jesper Juhl <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] kill access_ok() call from copy_siginfo_to_user() that we might as well avoid. |
| |
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > [ Linux-kernel added back into the cc, because I actually think this is > important. ] > > On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote: > > > > Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever > > patches? are they more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled > > people on lkml or can you all live with my, sometimes quite ignorant, > > patches? > > I do try to learn from the feedback I get, and I like to think that my > > patches are gradually getting a bit better, but if I'm more of a bother > > than a help I might as well stop. > > To me, the biggest thing with small patches is not necessarily the patch > itself. I think that much more important than the patch is the fact that > people get used to the notion that they can change the kernel - not just > on an intellectual level ("I understand that the GPL means that I have the > right to change my kernel"), but on a more practical level ("Hey, I did > that small change"). > Right, that actually does give one a warm fuzzy feeling inside once in a while and encourages you to carry on.
> And whether it ends up being the right thing or not, that's how everybody > starts out. It's simply not possible to "get into" the kernel without > starting out small, and making mistakes. So I very much encourage it, even > if I often don't have the time to actually worry about small patches, and > I try to get suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hother developers like Rusty to try to > acts as quality control and a "gathering place". > > Btw, this is why even "trivial patches" really do take time - they often > have trivial mistakes in them, and it's not just because there are more > inexperienced people doing them - most of _my_ mistakes tend to be at the > truly idiotic level, just because it "looked obvious", and then there's > something that I miss. > > So at one level I absolutely _hate_ trivial patches: they take time and > effort to merge, and individually the patch itself is often not really > obviously "worth it". But at the same time, I think the trivial patches > are among the most important ones - exactly because they are the "entry" > patches for every new developer. > > I just try really hard to find somebody else to worry about them ;) > Heh, quite understandable - I wouldn't want to be at the other end of your mailbox.
> (It's not a thankful job, btw, exactly because it _looks_ so trivial. It's > easy to point to 99 patches that are absolutely obvious, and complain > about the fact that they haven't been merged. But they take time to merge > exactly because of that one patch that _did_ look obvious, but wasn't. > And actually, it's usually not 99:1, it's usually more like 10:1 or > something). > > So please don't stop. Yes, those trivial patches _are_ a bother. Damn, > they are _horrible_. But at the same time, the devil is in the detail, and > they are needed in the long run. Both the patches themselves, and the > people that grew up on them. > Ok, thank you so much for that reply. I'll try to keep the pain to a minimum, but I'll keep on doing the trivial (and hopefully in the long run the not-so trivial) patches :) You just brought some courage/spirit/enthusiasm back to a disheartened kernel-hacker-wannabe ;-) Thank you!
-- Jesper
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |