Weekly Edition
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Quotes of the week
Stress testing is rarely useful here - things like ioctl races you
find by thinking evil thoughts.
-- Alan Cox
The greatest problem, as I see it is that by pouring vitriol like
this on newbies, we're really damaging our reputation as a
community that welcomes newcomers and strangling our necessary
supply of willing volunteers. On the other hand, as a maintainer,
when there's people yelling me at about patches not being included
plus a persistent regressions list and about ten bug reports to
track down, the last thing I want to see within a million miles of
my inbox is a white space fixing patch. The more of these patches
we get, the worse the problem becomes and the shorter and more
inflammatory the responses get. We can't go on like this.
-- James Bottomley
The #1 project for all kernel beginners should surely be "make sure
that the kernel runs perfectly at all times on all machines which
you can lay your hands on". Usually the way to do this is to work
with others on getting things fixed up (this can require
persistence!) but that's fine - it's a part of kernel development.
-- Andrew Morton(Log in to post comments)
Quotes of the week Posted May 29, 2008 20:22 UTC (Thu) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] I disagree with what Morton said, fixing bugs usually needs a deep knowledge of the software you're trying to fix. That's not what the newbie kernel hacker should try as a first step. First steps are always exercises, like start to program a little kernel module, then write one more complex and so on.
Quotes of the week Posted May 29, 2008 20:49 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] Nothing gives you deep knowledge of software like trying to fix a bug in it, although admittedly the initial learning curve is steep. Certainly introductory exercises such as you suggest are a necessary start, but (to use yet another car analogy) learning to change a tire doesn't make you an auto mechanic.
Quotes of the week Posted May 30, 2008 15:35 UTC (Fri) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] Not to further discuss this topic, which more or less is clear, but I just noticed that your analogy is somewhat strange. Actually "learning to change a tire" is much more similar to fixing bugs in software, than to making focused exercises.
Quotes of the week Posted Jun 9, 2008 2:43 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link] Not necessarily, if you're good at logical problem finding (or just plain lucky). I've done a fair amount, granted not in the kernel, but definitely in complex tangled software that I've previously looked into even less than kernel stuff. Being able to find ways of narrowing down where the problem most likely lies is often a good enough start. Unplug all but most essential hardware, compile out all but most essential features, does that fix? Add half back... you don't need to understand how it could be in the half you're adding as opposed to the half still out, but it narrows down where it's likely to be. Of course, and knowledge you have have increases your chances of picking the right systems to remove/add first. Of course this example wouldn't get you far on its own, and is highly dependent on the type of problem, but as you start working your way in, learn little bits about where you're looking, and find what you have to do to look closer. Even if once found, you don't have a clue how to fix, being able to give this clear information to someone who /does/ understand it can often yield a pretty quick "ah I know". So yes I guess I think greater fundamental knowledge for newbs would be more productive than great understanding of deep internals with less knowledge of how to find where you need to be looking.
Quotes of the week Posted Jun 3, 2008 21:23 UTC (Tue) by dmag (subscriber, #17775) [Link] I agree with Morton. If you have a specific problem, you dig to the level of detail to solve the problem. You'll need deep understanding of C and pointers and such. But most of the time, you only need to learn a few kernel subsystems to fix the problem. The alternative is to try and "learn" the kernel top-down. But you don't learn anything in enough detail to be useful, so people resort to useless patches.
Quotes of the week Posted Jun 3, 2008 16:43 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] WRT Andrew Morton's comment -- which I agree with, BTW -- is there a formal regression test suite which can be used to determine this?
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