Re: CFD: linux-wanking@vger.kernel.org (was [PATCH] Standard indentation of arguments)

[Jesper Juhl]

2008/5/22 Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 01:46:28AM +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote:
>>...
>> 2. How to find things to work on as a beginner
>>...
>> Finding bugs to fix is easy. Here are some ways to find useful work to
>> do:
>>...
>
> But fixing them is not so easy...
>
> Sorry for being destructive, but we do not have easy coding tasks
> for newbies.
>
A) You are not being destructive, you are doing exactely what I hoped
people would do, which is comment on my draft so I can make it better
:)

B) You are absolutely right in saying that fixing bugs is not (always)
easy. But it's a fact that many people ask questions along the lines
of "where do I start?", "where can I find something useful to work
on?", "I want to learn, is there some code that needs attention I can
start reading?" and similar. I'm simply trying to help the people who
ask that sort of questions by providing them with a source of stuff to
attack. Whether or not someone will be able to fix a bug is a
different issue to whether or not a person can find somewhere to start
getting into kernel development in a useful way.

> If it's easy it's already fixed,

True, and then again, not always.  Do 100 randconfig builds and I'm
willing to bet that at least a handful of the compiler errors or
warnings you encounter can be fixed by simply including a header,
moving an #ifdef, fixing a cast, fixing a printk format string or
similar.
There are many difficult to fix bugs in the kernel, but there's also
still some low-hanging fruit left (and I suspect there will always
be).

>and dozens of people following your
> advice to look at e.g. compile or sparse warnings will only generate
> much noise, but they'll have a hard time finding anything they are
> capable to fix.
>
You may be right, but personally I'm not so sure. The kernel is a
large project and we have many people who want to get involved but
give up when hitting the very first barrier to entry; finding
somewhere to start. Sure, there will be some noise, but I would hope
that there would also be many good (if somewhat trivial) patches - and
once people get one or two trivial patches accepted they may be
encouraged to delve in deeper and do more useful work.
Those that can't even fix a simple warning or missing include file
error will probably give up whether or not we provide this document or
not.

-- 
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@xxxxxxxxx>
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