Commit aeb218d9 authored by Simon Horman's avatar Simon Horman Committed by Jakub Kicinski
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docs: netdev: document guidance on cleanup patches 



The purpose of this section is to document what is the current practice
regarding clean-up patches which address checkpatch warnings and similar
problems. I feel there is a value in having this documented so others
can easily refer to it.

Clearly this topic is subjective. And to some extent the current
practice discourages a wider range of patches than is described here.
But I feel it is best to start somewhere, with the most well established
part of the current practice.

Signed-off-by: default avatarSimon Horman <horms@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20241009-doc-mc-clean-v2-1-e637b665fa81@kernel.org


Signed-off-by: default avatarJakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
parent ffc8fa91

Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst

+17 −0
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -355,6 +355,8 @@ just do it. As a result, a sequence of smaller series gets merged quicker and 
with better review coverage. Re-posting large series also increases the mailing

list traffic.



.. _rcs:



Local variable ordering ("reverse xmas tree", "RCS")

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -391,6 +393,21 @@ APIs and helpers, especially scoped iterators. However, direct use of 
``__free()`` within networking core and drivers is discouraged.

Similar guidance applies to declaring variables mid-function.



Clean-up patches

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Netdev discourages patches which perform simple clean-ups, which are not in

the context of other work. For example:



* Addressing ``checkpatch.pl`` warnings

* Addressing :ref:`Local variable ordering<rcs>` issues

* Conversions to device-managed APIs (``devm_`` helpers)



This is because it is felt that the churn that such changes produce comes

at a greater cost than the value of such clean-ups.



Conversely, spelling and grammar fixes are not discouraged.



Resending after review

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~