On Sat, 09 Dec 2017 19:04:43 +0100, Chris Caudle wrote:
I am helping review a new network audio driver that is being developed as an ALSA virtual sound card. The developer is experienced in programming, but not much in interacting with open source development. I am out of practice in programming, but would like to help with community interaction, so need some advice on getting started submitting a new driver for review.
My first assumption is that since ALSA has been part of the kernel tree for quite a while all the code should match the kernel style guide (basically K&R style). Is that correct?
The detailed coding style is found in Documentation/process/coding-style.rst. In doubt, try to check via scripts/checkpatch.pl.
There is some cleanup to do there, as well as some cleanup to match some recent kernel API changes (e.g. is currently using tasklet timers, but I think those are pulled out now so will need to switch to softirq timers).
Once I can help get the style and API usage cleaned up, how should a new driver be submitted for review? It is currently in a semi-private tree on bitbucket.org. A series of patches as email? One big email that contains all of the driver source? Some other way? The alsa-project.org page doesn't really have a "getting started on a new driver for newbies" page that I could find.
There is no difference from any other kernel stuff: just submit the patch(es) to the corresponding subsystem mailing list. In the case of sound drivers, submit to alsa-devel ML, and don't forget to put Cc to the maintainers.
The detailed procedure for a patch submission is found in Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst. It's a bit lengthy, but worth to read through.
thanks,
Takashi