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

Documentation/SubmittingDrivers

+31 −14
Original line number Diff line number Diff line 
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
@@ -141,13 +153,18 @@ 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/



Linux USB project: