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Working with the kernel development community

Documentation/process/index.rst

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============================================= Working with the kernel development community

So you want to be a Linux kernel developer? Welcome! While there is a lot to be learned about the kernel in a technical sense, it is also important to learn about how our community works. Reading these documents will make it much easier for you to get your changes merged with a minimum of trouble.

An introduction to how kernel development works

Read these documents first: an understanding of the material here will ease your entry into the kernel community.

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

howto development-process submitting-patches submit-checklist

Tools and technical guides for kernel developers

This is a collection of material that kernel developers should be familiar with.

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

changes programming-language coding-style maintainer-pgp-guide email-clients applying-patches backporting adding-syscalls volatile-considered-harmful botching-up-ioctls

Policy guides and developer statements

These are the rules that we try to live by in the kernel community (and beyond).

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

license-rules code-of-conduct code-of-conduct-interpretation contribution-maturity-model kernel-enforcement-statement kernel-driver-statement stable-api-nonsense stable-kernel-rules management-style researcher-guidelines generated-content coding-assistants conclave

Dealing with bugs

Bugs are a fact of life; it is important that we handle them properly. The documents below provide general advice about debugging and describe our policies around the handling of a couple of special classes of bugs: regressions and security problems.

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

debugging/index handling-regressions security-bugs cve embargoed-hardware-issues

Maintainer information

How to find the people who will accept your patches.

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

maintainer-handbooks maintainers

Other material

Here are some other guides to the community that are of interest to most developers:

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1

kernel-docs deprecated