Re: [PATCH] docs: clarify wording in programming-language.rst

From: Jonathan Corbet

Date: Sat Feb 14 2026 - 12:11:39 EST


Ariful Islam Shoikot <islamarifulshoikat@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Clarify that the Linux kernel is written in C and improve
> punctuation in the clang sentence.
>
> Signed-off-by: Ariful Islam Shoikot <islamarifulshoikat@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> Documentation/process/programming-language.rst | 6 +++---
> 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/process/programming-language.rst b/Documentation/process/programming-language.rst
> index f39d1d3dd9ce..c18e307ccb56 100644
> --- a/Documentation/process/programming-language.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/process/programming-language.rst
> @@ -3,10 +3,10 @@
> Programming Language
> ====================
>
> -The kernel is written in the C programming language [c-language]_.
> -More precisely, the kernel is typically compiled with ``gcc`` [gcc]_
> +The Linux kernel is written in the C programming language [c-language]_.
> +More precisely, it is typically compiled with ``gcc`` [gcc]_
> under ``-std=gnu11`` [gcc-c-dialect-options]_: the GNU dialect of ISO C11.
> -``clang`` [clang]_ is also supported, see docs on
> +``clang`` [clang]_ is also supported; see documentation on
> :ref:`Building Linux with Clang/LLVM <kbuild_llvm>`.

So you have tidied up the language, but not addressed the fact that the
information is somewhat outdated. Clang is a first-class option these
days, and the documentation should probably reflect that.

Oh well, I've applied this as a good start :)

Thanks,

jon