My first patch to the Linux kernel

ashwinnair99 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The first one always takes way longer than the code itself deserves. Most of the work is figuring out the unwritten rules, not writing the patch.

▲

fooker an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This is a big problem in open source that seems taboo to discuss.

In my opinion, unwritten rules are for gatekeeping. And if a new person follows all the unwritten rules, magically there's no one willing to review.

I think this is how large BFDL-style open source projects slowly become less and less relevant over the next few decades.

	▲	cromka an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed. The level of aggressive gatekeepers is just crazy, take Linux ARM mailing list for example. I found the Central and Eastern Europeans particularly aggressive there and I'm saying this as on myself. They sure do like to feel special there, with very little soft skills.

▲

yu3zhou4 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can confirm that it also happens in other complex systems! Still a lot of good time and the novelty factor helps with pushing through

▲

seb1204 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sand that after so many years these rules are still not written down.

▲

ngburke 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sign extension bugs are the worst. Silent for ages then suddenly everything is on fire. Spent a lot of time in C doing low-level firmware work and ran into the same class of issue more than once. Nice writeup, congrats on the patch.

▲

foltik an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well done and great writeup! Any idea why the bug hadn’t shown up sooner, like when running self tests?

▲

yu3zhou4 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Congrats and happy for you, you had a lot of fun and did something genuinely interesting

▲

mbana 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I love these kind of posts.