Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 22 May 2008 02:34:32 +0200 | From | "Jesper Juhl" <> | Subject | Re: CFD: (was [PATCH] Standard indentation of arguments) |
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2008/5/22 Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>: > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 01:46:28AM +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote: > > 0. Use your common sense. No hard rules will ever replace that. > >> - Sign up with Coverity (http://www.coverity.com/) to get access to >> the results of their regular runs of Coverity Prevent against the >> kernel source. Their static analysis of the kernel source finds many >> bugs that need fixing. There is lots of good work there that needs >> doing. >> >> Naturally there's also other work that can be done, like writing a >> driver for some, currently unsupported, hardware etc, but its probably >> best to get your feet wet with some bug fixing first. > > If you are familiar with C, reading the kernel source (e.g. starting > at system call and going down from there) can be very useful; you will > need such skills anyway and you might actually find real bugs. > > Asking the questions along the lines "code seems to assume that <this> never > happens; why can't it happen and what happens if it does?" is generally > welcome, assuming that question is more or less coherent. "I do not > understand this code at all" will be less useful and "<this> is <expletives> > BROKEN!!! I've found a major hole!!!" would better be right - which is not > impossible. Use common sense; if you turn out to be wrong (which is also > quite possible), the size of crow you'll have to eat will be directly > proportional to the vehemence of the original posting. That applies to all > of us - pretty much everyone had been there and probably will be there again > and again. On the other hand, do not be surprised if the answer will be > "It's because... Umm... Oh, !@#!@#, looks like you've spotted a nasty hole". > It also happens and assuming that code is correct just because it is in the > tree is a bad mistake. Newbies can and do find serious bugs and doing that > can earn one a lot of good will. > >> Try to stay away from doing pointless work, like just fixing up the >> coding style in a file, reformatting comments etc - it's not worth the >> effort and your patch is likely to be rejected. Fixing up incorrect >> comments to be correct, fixing up references to removed or renamed >> functions/arguments etc is, however, useful and worth doing. > > Note that fixing up coding style in the code you are modifying is fine, > provided that coding style part does not obscure the real changes you > are making and the scale of coding style changes is not wildly out of > proportion. Again, use the common sense - changing two lines in a function > is not a reason to reformat every file in directory while you are at it. >
Thanks a lot for your comments Al. I'll try to incorporate most of it in the next revision of the document.
-- Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> 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
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