Re: [RFC] Maintainer entry profile/contributor guide for IIO

David Lechner <[email protected]>
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-iio
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 8/17/26 4:18 AM, Joshua Crofts wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I was browsing lore and checked out the ksummit mailing list, where the
> topic about guiding new contributors arose [1]. New contributors tend to
> make the same mistakes when sending patches, causing reviewers to point
> these out all the time over and over again. For IIO, this is definitely the
> case (I myself send an email telling people not to send a v2 in reply to a
> v1 several times a week). Other subsystems have a "Maintainer entry profile"
> that contains subsystem-specific process info (DAMON for example [2]) and 
> (sometimes even [3]) a document describing the code style of the subsystem
> (this would be a great place where to mention things like not using
> kernel.h in new drivers etc.). I'm happy to create both of the documents
> but it's always great to hear other people's ideas! 

I think there are plenty of new contributor (to the kernel) guides out there.
People just don't read them. So I don't think we need another. Nothing wrong
with trying to make the existing guides more clear/easy to understand though.

A subsystem doc that has our code style quirks and idioms would be helpful
though as I don't think that has every been written down in a single place.
Especially useful now since AI reviewers will read it even if humans don't.

> 
> Second of all, the idea of having a bot that would automatically detect new
> contributors (i.e. the email they're submitting the patch with doesn't show
> up in `git log --author`) and send an email reminding them of the basic rules
> (while also referring to the entry profile mentioned above) sounds like a
> great idea, but of course hosting and maintaining are pain points.
> 
> Please let me know what you think of the above ideas!
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/ksummit/[email protected]/
> [2] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/mm/damon/maintainer-profile.rst
> [3] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/hwmon/submitting-patches.rst
>
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