--- /dev/null
+Submitting Drivers For The Linux Kernel
+---------------------------------------
+
+This document is intended to explain how to submit device drivers to the
+various kernel trees. Note that if you are interested in video card drivers
+you should probably talk to XFree86 (http://www.xfree86.org/) and/or X.Org
+(http://x.org/) instead.
+
+Also read the Documentation/SubmittingPatches document.
+
+
+Allocating Device Numbers
+-------------------------
+
+Major and minor numbers for block and character devices are allocated
+by the Linux assigned name and number authority (currently this is
+Torben Mathiasen). The site is http://www.lanana.org/. This
+also deals with allocating numbers for devices that are not going to
+be submitted to the mainstream kernel.
+See Documentation/devices.txt for more information on this.
+
+If you don't use assigned numbers then when your device is submitted it will
+be given an assigned number even if that is different from values you may
+have shipped to customers before.
+
+Who To Submit Drivers To
+------------------------
+
+Linux 2.0:
+ No new drivers are accepted for this kernel tree.
+
+Linux 2.2:
+ No new drivers are accepted for this kernel tree.
+
+Linux 2.4:
+ If the code area has a general maintainer then please submit it to
+ the maintainer listed in MAINTAINERS in the kernel file. If the
+ maintainer does not respond or you cannot find the appropriate
+ maintainer then please contact Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>.
+
+Linux 2.6:
+ The same rules apply as 2.4 except that you should follow linux-kernel
+ to track changes in API's. The final contact point for Linux 2.6
+ submissions is Andrew Morton.
+
+What Criteria Determine Acceptance
+----------------------------------
+
+Licensing: The code must be released to us under the
+ GNU General Public License. We don't insist on any kind
+ of exclusive GPL licensing, and if you wish the driver
+ to be useful to other communities such as BSD you may well
+ wish to release under multiple licenses.
+ See accepted licenses at include/linux/module.h
+
+Copyright: The copyright owner must agree to use of GPL.
+ It's best if the submitter and copyright owner
+ are the same person/entity. If not, the name of
+ the person/entity authorizing use of GPL should be
+ listed in case it's necessary to verify the will of
+ the copyright owner.
+
+Interfaces: If your driver uses existing interfaces and behaves like
+ other drivers in the same class it will be much more likely
+ to be accepted than if it invents gratuitous new ones.
+ If you need to implement a common API over Linux and NT
+ drivers do it in userspace.
+
+Code: Please use the Linux style of code formatting as documented
+ in Documentation/CodingStyle. If you have sections of code
+ that need to be in other formats, for example because they
+ are shared with a windows driver kit and you want to
+ maintain them just once separate them out nicely and note
+ this fact.
+
+Portability: Pointers are not always 32bits, not all computers are little
+ endian, people do not all have floating point and you
+ shouldn't use inline x86 assembler in your driver without
+ careful thought. Pure x86 drivers generally are not popular.
+ If you only have x86 hardware it is hard to test portability
+ but it is easy to make sure the code can easily be made
+ portable.
+
+Clarity: It helps if anyone can see how to fix the driver. It helps
+ you because you get patches not bug reports. If you submit a
+ driver that intentionally obfuscates how the hardware works
+ it will go in the bitbucket.
+
+PM support: Since Linux is used on many portable and desktop systems, your
+ driver is likely to be used on such a system and therefore it
+ should support basic power management by implementing, if
+ necessary, the .suspend and .resume methods used during the
+ system-wide suspend and resume transitions. You should verify
+ that your driver correctly handles the suspend and resume, but
+ if you are unable to ensure that, please at least define the
+ .suspend method returning the -ENOSYS ("Function not
+ implemented") error. You should also try to make sure that your
+ driver uses as little power as possible when it's not doing
+ anything. For the driver testing instructions see
+ Documentation/power/drivers-testing.txt and for a relatively
+ complete overview of the power management issues related to
+ drivers see Documentation/power/devices.txt .
+
+Control: In general if there is active maintenance of a driver by
+ the author then patches will be redirected to them unless
+ they are totally obvious and without need of checking.
+ If you want to be the contact and update point for the
+ driver it is a good idea to state this in the comments,
+ and include an entry in MAINTAINERS for your driver.
+
+What Criteria Do Not Determine Acceptance
+-----------------------------------------
+
+Vendor: Being the hardware vendor and maintaining the driver is
+ often a good thing. If there is a stable working driver from
+ other people already in the tree don't expect 'we are the
+ vendor' to get your driver chosen. Ideally work with the
+ existing driver author to build a single perfect driver.
+
+Author: It doesn't matter if a large Linux company wrote the driver,
+ or you did. Nobody has any special access to the kernel
+ tree. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't telling the
+ whole story.
+
+
+Resources
+---------
+
+Linux kernel master tree:
+ ftp.??.kernel.org:/pub/linux/kernel/...
+ ?? == your country code, such as "us", "uk", "fr", etc.
+
+ http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
+
+Linux kernel mailing list:
+ linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
+ [mail majordomo@vger.kernel.org to subscribe]
+
+Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition (covers 2.6.10):
+ http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/ (free version)
+
+LWN.net:
+ Weekly summary of kernel development activity - http://lwn.net/
+ 2.6 API changes:
+ http://lwn.net/Articles/2.6-kernel-api/
+ Porting drivers from prior kernels to 2.6:
+ http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/
+
+KernelNewbies:
+ Documentation and assistance for new kernel programmers
+ http://kernelnewbies.org/
+
+Linux USB project:
+ http://www.linux-usb.org/
+
+How to NOT write kernel driver by Arjan van de Ven:
+ http://www.fenrus.org/how-to-not-write-a-device-driver-paper.pdf
+
+Kernel Janitor:
+ http://kernelnewbies.org/KernelJanitors
+
+GIT, Fast Version Control System:
+ http://git-scm.com/
Code Review / kvmfornfv.git / blobdiff