75 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
75 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
8: FOR MORE INFORMATION
|
|
|
|
There are numerous sources of information on Linux kernel development and
|
|
related topics. First among those will always be the Documentation
|
|
directory found in the kernel source distribution. The top-level HOWTO
|
|
file is an important starting point; SubmittingPatches and
|
|
SubmittingDrivers are also something which all kernel developers should
|
|
read. Many internal kernel APIs are documented using the kerneldoc
|
|
mechanism; "make htmldocs" or "make pdfdocs" can be used to generate those
|
|
documents in HTML or PDF format (though the version of TeX shipped by some
|
|
distributions runs into internal limits and fails to process the documents
|
|
properly).
|
|
|
|
Various web sites discuss kernel development at all levels of detail. Your
|
|
author would like to humbly suggest http://lwn.net/ as a source;
|
|
information on many specific kernel topics can be found via the LWN kernel
|
|
index at:
|
|
|
|
http://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/
|
|
|
|
Beyond that, a valuable resource for kernel developers is:
|
|
|
|
http://kernelnewbies.org/
|
|
|
|
Information about the linux-next tree gathers at:
|
|
|
|
http://linux.f-seidel.de/linux-next/pmwiki/
|
|
|
|
And, of course, one should not forget http://kernel.org/, the definitive
|
|
location for kernel release information.
|
|
|
|
There are a number of books on kernel development:
|
|
|
|
Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition (Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro
|
|
Rubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman). Online at
|
|
http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/.
|
|
|
|
Linux Kernel Development (Robert Love).
|
|
|
|
Understanding the Linux Kernel (Daniel Bovet and Marco Cesati).
|
|
|
|
All of these books suffer from a common fault, though: they tend to be
|
|
somewhat obsolete by the time they hit the shelves, and they have been on
|
|
the shelves for a while now. Still, there is quite a bit of good
|
|
information to be found there.
|
|
|
|
Documentation for git can be found at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
|
|
|
|
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
9: CONCLUSION
|
|
|
|
Congratulations to anybody who has made it through this long-winded
|
|
document. Hopefully it has provided a helpful understanding of how the
|
|
Linux kernel is developed and how you can participate in that process.
|
|
|
|
In the end, it's the participation that matters. Any open source software
|
|
project is no more than the sum of what its contributors put into it. The
|
|
Linux kernel has progressed as quickly and as well as it has because it has
|
|
been helped by an impressively large group of developers, all of whom are
|
|
working to make it better. The kernel is a premier example of what can be
|
|
done when thousands of people work together toward a common goal.
|
|
|
|
The kernel can always benefit from a larger developer base, though. There
|
|
is always more work to do. But, just as importantly, most other
|
|
participants in the Linux ecosystem can benefit through contributing to the
|
|
kernel. Getting code into the mainline is the key to higher code quality,
|
|
lower maintenance and distribution costs, a higher level of influence over
|
|
the direction of kernel development, and more. It is a situation where
|
|
everybody involved wins. Fire up your editor and come join us; you will be
|
|
more than welcome.
|