path: root/SubmittingPatches

==========================
Submitting Patches to Ceph
==========================

This is based on Documentation/SubmittingPatches from the Linux kernel,
but has pared down significantly and updated slightly.  The patch signing
procedures and definitions are unmodified.


---------------------
SIGNING CONTRIBUTIONS
---------------------

In order to keep the record of code attribution clean within the
source repository, please follow these guidelines for signing 
patches submitted to the project.  These definitions are taken
from those used by the Linux kernel and many other open source
projects.

1) Sign your work

To improve tracking of who did what, especially with patches that can
percolate to their final resting place in the kernel through several
layers of maintainers, we've introduced a "sign-off" procedure on
patches that are being emailed around.

The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the
patch, which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
pass it on as a open-source patch.  The rules are pretty simple: if you
can certify the below:

        Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

        By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

        (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
            have the right to submit it under the open source license
            indicated in the file; or

        (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
            of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
            license and I have the right under that license to submit that
            work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
            by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
            permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
            in the file; or

        (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
            person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
            it.

	(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
	    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
	    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
	    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
	    this project or the open source license(s) involved.

then you just add a line saying

	Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>

using your real name (sorry, no pseudonyms or anonymous contributions.)

Some people also put extra tags at the end.  They'll just be ignored for
now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
point out some special detail about the sign-off. 

If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly
modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not
exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to
rule (c), you should ask the submitter to rediff, but this is a totally
counter-productive waste of time and energy. Rule (b) allows you to adjust
the code, but then it is very impolite to change one submitter's code and
make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it is recommended that
you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and yours, indicating
the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory about this, it
seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or name, all
enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious that
you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example :

	Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
	[lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h]
	Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org>

This practise is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and
want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix,
and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances
can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one
which appears in the changelog.

Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practise
to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
here's what we see in 2.6-stable :

    Date:   Tue May 13 19:10:30 2008 +0000

        SCSI: libiscsi regression in 2.6.25: fix nop timer handling

        commit 4cf1043593db6a337f10e006c23c69e5fc93e722 upstream

And here's what appears in 2.4 :

    Date:   Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200

        wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay

        [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]

Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
tracking your trees, and to people trying to trouble-shoot bugs in your
tree.


2) When to use Acked-by: and Cc:

The Signed-off-by: tag indicates that the signer was involved in the
development of the patch, or that he/she was in the patch's delivery path.

If a person was not directly involved in the preparation or handling of a
patch but wishes to signify and record their approval of it then they can
arrange to have an Acked-by: line added to the patch's changelog.

Acked-by: is often used by the maintainer of the affected code when that
maintainer neither contributed to nor forwarded the patch.

Acked-by: is not as formal as Signed-off-by:.  It is a record that the acker
has at least reviewed the patch and has indicated acceptance.  Hence patch
mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me"
into an Acked-by:.

Acked-by: does not necessarily indicate acknowledgement of the entire patch.
For example, if a patch affects multiple subsystems and has an Acked-by: from
one subsystem maintainer then this usually indicates acknowledgement of just
the part which affects that maintainer's code.  Judgement should be used here.
When in doubt people should refer to the original discussion in the mailing
list archives.

If a person has had the opportunity to comment on a patch, but has not
provided such comments, you may optionally add a "Cc:" tag to the patch.
This is the only tag which might be added without an explicit action by the
person it names.  This tag documents that potentially interested parties
have been included in the discussion


3) Using Reported-by:, Tested-by: and Reviewed-by:

If this patch fixes a problem reported by somebody else, consider adding a
Reported-by: tag to credit the reporter for their contribution.  Please
note that this tag should not be added without the reporter's permission,
especially if the problem was not reported in a public forum.  That said,
if we diligently credit our bug reporters, they will, hopefully, be
inspired to help us again in the future.

A Tested-by: tag indicates that the patch has been successfully tested (in
some environment) by the person named.  This tag informs maintainers that
some testing has been performed, provides a means to locate testers for
future patches, and ensures credit for the testers.

Reviewed-by:, instead, indicates that the patch has been reviewed and found
acceptable according to the Reviewer's Statement:

	Reviewer's statement of oversight

	By offering my Reviewed-by: tag, I state that:

 	 (a) I have carried out a technical review of this patch to
	     evaluate its appropriateness and readiness for inclusion into
	     the mainline kernel.

	 (b) Any problems, concerns, or questions relating to the patch
	     have been communicated back to the submitter.  I am satisfied
	     with the submitter's response to my comments.

	 (c) While there may be things that could be improved with this
	     submission, I believe that it is, at this time, (1) a
	     worthwhile modification to the kernel, and (2) free of known
	     issues which would argue against its inclusion.

	 (d) While I have reviewed the patch and believe it to be sound, I
	     do not (unless explicitly stated elsewhere) make any
	     warranties or guarantees that it will achieve its stated
	     purpose or function properly in any given situation.

A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an
appropriate modification of the kernel without any remaining serious
technical issues.  Any interested reviewer (who has done the work) can
offer a Reviewed-by tag for a patch.  This tag serves to give credit to
reviewers and to inform maintainers of the degree of review which has been
done on the patch.  Reviewed-by: tags, when supplied by reviewers known to
understand the subject area and to perform thorough reviews, will normally
increase the likelihood of your patch getting into the kernel.


-----------------------------
PREPARING AND SENDING PATCHES
-----------------------------

The upstream repository is managed by Git.  You will find that it
is easiest to work on the project and submit changes by using the
git tools, both for managing your own code and for preparing and
sending patches.

1) "git format-patch"

The best way to generate a patch is to work from a Git checkout of
the Ceph source code.  You can then generate patches with the
'git format-patch' command.  For example,

     $ git format-patch HEAD^^ -o mything

will take the last two commits and generate patches in the mything/
directory.  The commit you specify on the command line is the
'upstream' commit that you are diffing against.  Note that it does
not necesarily have to be an ancestor of your current commit.  You
can do something like

     $ git checkout -b mything
     $ ... do lots of stuff ...
     $ git fetch
     ...find out that origin/unstable has also moved forward...
     $ git format-patch origin/unstable -o mything

and the patches will be against origin/unstable.

The -o dir is optional; if left off, the patch(es) will appear in
the current directory.  This can quickly get messy.

You can also add --cover-letter and get a '0000' patch in the
mything/ directory.  That can be updated to include any overview
stuff for a multipart patch series.  If it's a single patch, don't
bother.

Make sure your patch does not include any extra files which do not
belong in a patch submission.  Make sure to review your patch -after-
generated it with diff(1), to ensure accuracy.

If your changes produce a lot of deltas, you may want to look into
splitting them into individual patches which modify things in
logical stages.  This will facilitate easier reviewing by other
kernel developers, very important if you want your patch accepted.
There are a number of scripts which can aid in this:


2) Sending patches with "git send-email"

The git send-email command make it super easy to send patches
(particularly those prepared with git format patch).  It is careful to
format the emails correctly so that you don't have to worry about your
email client mangling whitespace or otherwise screwing things up.  It
works like so:

     $ git send-email --to ceph-devel@vger.kernel.org my.patch

for a single patch, or

     $ git send-email --to ceph-devel@vger.kernel.org mything

to send a whole patch series (prepared with, say, git format-patch).


3) Describe your changes.

Describe the technical detail of the change(s) your patch includes.

Be as specific as possible.  The WORST descriptions possible include
things like "update driver X", "bug fix for driver X", or "this patch
includes updates for subsystem X.  Please apply."

The maintainer will thank you if you write your patch description in a
form which can be easily pulled into Linux's source code management
system, git, as a "commit log".  See #15, below.

If your description starts to get long, that's a sign that you probably
need to split up your patch.  See #3, next.

When you submit or resubmit a patch or patch series, include the
complete patch description and justification for it.  Don't just
say that this is version N of the patch (series).  Don't expect the
patch merger to refer back to earlier patch versions or referenced
URLs to find the patch description and put that into the patch.
I.e., the patch (series) and its description should be self-contained.
This benefits both the patch merger(s) and reviewers.  Some reviewers
probably didn't even receive earlier versions of the patch.

If the patch fixes a logged bug entry, refer to that bug entry by
number and URL.


4) Separate your changes.

Separate _logical changes_ into a single patch file.

For example, if your changes include both bug fixes and performance
enhancements for a single driver, separate those changes into two
or more patches.  If your changes include an API update, and a new
driver which uses that new API, separate those into two patches.

On the other hand, if you make a single change to numerous files,
group those changes into a single patch.  Thus a single logical change
is contained within a single patch.

If one patch depends on another patch in order for a change to be
complete, that is OK.  Simply note "this patch depends on patch X"
in your patch description.

If you cannot condense your patch set into a smaller set of patches,
then only post say 15 or so at a time and wait for review and integration.



5) Style check your changes.

Check your patch for basic style violations, details of which can be
found in CodingStyle.



6) No MIME, no links, no compression, no attachments.  Just plain text.

Developers need to be able to read and comment on the changes you are
submitting.  It is important for a kernel developer to be able to
"quote" your changes, using standard e-mail tools, so that they may
comment on specific portions of your code.

For this reason, all patches should be submitting e-mail "inline".
WARNING:  Be wary of your editor's word-wrap corrupting your patch,
if you choose to cut-n-paste your patch.

Do not attach the patch as a MIME attachment, compressed or not.
Many popular e-mail applications will not always transmit a MIME
attachment as plain text, making it impossible to comment on your
code.  A MIME attachment also takes Linus a bit more time to process,
decreasing the likelihood of your MIME-attached change being accepted.

Exception:  If your mailer is mangling patches then someone may ask
you to re-send them using MIME.