[Linux-kernel-mentees] Evaluate and Improve checkpatch

Lukas Bulwahn lukas.bulwahn at gmail.com
Mon Aug 17 09:35:20 UTC 2020


Hi Piyush,

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020, Piyush Thange wrote:

> Hello sir, myself Piyush Thange I'm a junior student of Computer Engineering.
> I'm interested in the project - "Evaluate and Improving checkpatch.pl" and
> willing to contribute to the project.
> Please I would like to know more about this project and if you have any
> specific task please provide it to me.
>

The zeroth task is to learn suitable netiquette for the communication with 
the kernel community.

First, please do not top-post.

    A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
    Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?

    A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
    Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

    A: The lost context.
    Q: What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?

    A: Yes.
    Q: Should I trim down the quoted part of an email to which I'm 
replying?

Second, please always CC: linux-kernel-mentees at lists.linux-foundation.org.

Third, set up your email client according to the kernel community rules.



Then, the first task is to run checkpatch.pl on a few kernel patches and
collect the results. When you have that, please share your script with
me, e.g., in a github repository.


Hints to the first task:

Can you create a list of all non-merge commits that were added in the
version v5.8 of the kernel, i.e., all non-merge commits that are in v5.8
and not already in v5.7?

Can you share the script/command you executed and the resulting list on 
github?

Can you run your script on all commits of this list above and record
all checkpatch.pl reports, and store them in your github repository?

Can you suggest ideas how to aggregate the findings and create a
statistics? For example: Which type of error is reported most?
Can you implement that idea?


I also suggest to have a look at
the options ./scripts/checkpatch.pl --list-types and
./scripts/checkpatch.pl --show-types. The option --show-types changes
the output of checkpatch.pl to list type identifiers, so it is easier
to parse and aggregate the output.

Please also share the script you create for that purpose on your
github repository.



The second task is to pick one warning that appears often and improve
checkpatch.pl to handle that better and get it accepted by the kernel
community.

Hints to the second task follow when the first task is solved.

If you fail on any of those tasks, you are out of the selection process.


Lukas


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