Commit ceeb1a54 authored by Mauro Carvalho Chehab's avatar Mauro Carvalho Chehab Committed by Jonathan Corbet

Documentation/SubmittingDrivers: convert it to ReST markup

- Change the document title markup to make it on a higher level;
- Add blank lines as needed, to improve the output;
- use italics for the country-code at kernel.org ftp URL.
Signed-off-by: default avatarMauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
parent 5fe270a4
Submitting Drivers For The Linux Kernel
---------------------------------------
=======================================
This document is intended to explain how to submit device drivers to the
various kernel trees. Note that if you are interested in video card drivers
......@@ -46,34 +46,39 @@ Linux 2.6:
What Criteria Determine Acceptance
----------------------------------
Licensing: The code must be released to us under the
Licensing:
The code must be released to us under the
GNU General Public License. We don't insist on any kind
of exclusive GPL licensing, and if you wish the driver
to be useful to other communities such as BSD you may well
wish to release under multiple licenses.
See accepted licenses at include/linux/module.h
Copyright: The copyright owner must agree to use of GPL.
Copyright:
The copyright owner must agree to use of GPL.
It's best if the submitter and copyright owner
are the same person/entity. If not, the name of
the person/entity authorizing use of GPL should be
listed in case it's necessary to verify the will of
the copyright owner.
Interfaces: If your driver uses existing interfaces and behaves like
Interfaces:
If your driver uses existing interfaces and behaves like
other drivers in the same class it will be much more likely
to be accepted than if it invents gratuitous new ones.
If you need to implement a common API over Linux and NT
drivers do it in userspace.
Code: Please use the Linux style of code formatting as documented
Code:
Please use the Linux style of code formatting as documented
in Documentation/CodingStyle. If you have sections of code
that need to be in other formats, for example because they
are shared with a windows driver kit and you want to
maintain them just once separate them out nicely and note
this fact.
Portability: Pointers are not always 32bits, not all computers are little
Portability:
Pointers are not always 32bits, not all computers are little
endian, people do not all have floating point and you
shouldn't use inline x86 assembler in your driver without
careful thought. Pure x86 drivers generally are not popular.
......@@ -81,12 +86,14 @@ Portability: Pointers are not always 32bits, not all computers are little
but it is easy to make sure the code can easily be made
portable.
Clarity: It helps if anyone can see how to fix the driver. It helps
Clarity:
It helps if anyone can see how to fix the driver. It helps
you because you get patches not bug reports. If you submit a
driver that intentionally obfuscates how the hardware works
it will go in the bitbucket.
PM support: Since Linux is used on many portable and desktop systems, your
PM support:
Since Linux is used on many portable and desktop systems, your
driver is likely to be used on such a system and therefore it
should support basic power management by implementing, if
necessary, the .suspend and .resume methods used during the
......@@ -101,7 +108,8 @@ PM support: Since Linux is used on many portable and desktop systems, your
complete overview of the power management issues related to
drivers see Documentation/power/devices.txt .
Control: In general if there is active maintenance of a driver by
Control:
In general if there is active maintenance of a driver by
the author then patches will be redirected to them unless
they are totally obvious and without need of checking.
If you want to be the contact and update point for the
......@@ -111,13 +119,15 @@ Control: In general if there is active maintenance of a driver by
What Criteria Do Not Determine Acceptance
-----------------------------------------
Vendor: Being the hardware vendor and maintaining the driver is
Vendor:
Being the hardware vendor and maintaining the driver is
often a good thing. If there is a stable working driver from
other people already in the tree don't expect 'we are the
vendor' to get your driver chosen. Ideally work with the
existing driver author to build a single perfect driver.
Author: It doesn't matter if a large Linux company wrote the driver,
Author:
It doesn't matter if a large Linux company wrote the driver,
or you did. Nobody has any special access to the kernel
tree. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't telling the
whole story.
......@@ -127,8 +137,10 @@ Resources
---------
Linux kernel master tree:
ftp.??.kernel.org:/pub/linux/kernel/...
?? == your country code, such as "us", "uk", "fr", etc.
ftp.\ *country_code*\ .kernel.org:/pub/linux/kernel/...
where *country_code* == your country code, such as
**us**, **uk**, **fr**, etc.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
......@@ -141,14 +153,19 @@ Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition (covers 2.6.10):
LWN.net:
Weekly summary of kernel development activity - http://lwn.net/
2.6 API changes:
http://lwn.net/Articles/2.6-kernel-api/
Porting drivers from prior kernels to 2.6:
http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/
KernelNewbies:
Documentation and assistance for new kernel programmers
http://kernelnewbies.org/
http://kernelnewbies.org/
Linux USB project:
http://www.linux-usb.org/
......
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