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Behind the Scenes in Kernel Development

Posted by michael on from the knit-one-perl-two dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Some interesting changes took place in the way the Linux kernel is developed and tested. In many ways, the methods used to develop the Linux kernel are much the same today as they were 3 years ago. However, several key changes have improved overall stability as well as quality. This article takes a look behind the scenes at the tools, tests, and techniques -- from revision control and regression testing to bugtracking and list keeping -- that helped make 2.6 a better kernel than any that have come before it." We might as well mention here (again) that a couple of new kernels are out: leif.singer writes "2.6.3 and 2.4.25 are out, fixing another vulnerability in do_mremap()."

5 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kernel development interests me terribly by deadlinegrunt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Find a particular functionality of the kernel that really interest you; read any documentation you can find about it; then grep the src till you see the relevant sections of code and start perusing with your $(EDITOR)

    Much time is spent teaching people how to write code but never really reading it. This is a perfect example of how to do it and why you would.

    --
    BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
  2. Post: -1, Redundant by HoldmyCauls · · Score: 5, Informative
    "2.6.3 and 2.4.25 are out, fixing another vulnerability in do_munmap()."

    The announcement for 2.6.3 and 2.4.25 was yesterday, and the vulnerability to which the link in the text above refers was with mremap, not munmap; there's also another vulnerability with mremap mentioned yesterday as an *update* to the kernel announcement.
    --
    Emacs: for people who just never know when to :q!
  3. ACPI cure for 2.4.25 HOW-TO by Quietti · · Score: 5, Informative

    Was here in yesterday's thread about 2.4.25 and 2.6.3 releases.

    --
    Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
  4. Re:Kernel quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    and random crashes using ide-scsi (yes I know it's deprecated, but some of us need it).

    disable ide-scsi and use latest cdrecord with

    dev=ATAPI:x,x,x

    instead of

    dev=x,x,x

    and everything is cool. Don't forget to check lilo.conf. Stop using cdrdao. Ignore xcdroast's "This would be faster is you had ide-scsi enabled" dialogs.

    This should apply to almost every kind of ide-scsi use.

  5. Re:Kernel development interests me terribly by tcopeland · · Score: 5, Informative

    Code Reading by Diomidis Spinellis contains a bunch of ideas on ways to comprehend large codebases more easily.

    He talks about browsing code, package structures, adding features or fixing bugs in a large codebase, and so on. It's a good read - well worth the money.

    --
    The Army reading list