Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Reviewing new API/ABI

[Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>]

On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Laurent Pinchart
<laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
> We have seen several review, test and documentation procedures being developed
> for different subsystems in the recent past (two examples are the DRM i915
> driver API test rules explained by Daniel Vetter in a reply to this mail
> thread, and the V4L test suite and documentation procedure) but I have seen
> little effort to consolidate good practice rules. The kernel would certainly
> benefit from both sharing information about how various subsystems tackle the
> API review/test/documentation problem.
>
> Forcing all subsystems to adhere and enforce a superset of rules would likely
> put too much burden on maintainers and developers, especially for the smaller
> subsystems. However, I believe we could help by gathering and consolidating
> the good practice rules in a single location under Documentation/. Maintainers
> could then implement those rules (or a subset thereof) without having to
> reinvent the wheel. Rules such as "return -EINVAL when a reserved parameter is
> set" are not complex to implement in code, the real challenge is to implement
> them in the brain of all developers and reviewers.

I'd be very interested in a discussions about existing best practices
already developed in different subsystems and figuring out what
minimal standards we should requires across the board.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch