kernel development environment

kernel development environment

[Miguel Angel Flores]

Hi all,

Recently I'm interested on linux kernel development. I would like to write
patches (and, of course, post them in this list ;). In fact, I could say 
that
I have already a patch for the console frame buffer support for the 2.6
branch.

My actual development environment consists in a scratch vim editor, 
diff, patch
and gcc. My question is: ¿What kind of tools use you, the kernel gurus, to
write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?

Thank you in advance and excuse my poor english.

MaF

Re: kernel development environment

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

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On Sat, 2004-12-04 18:52:58 +0100, Miguel Angel Flores <maf@sombragris.com>
wrote in message <41B1F97A.80803@sombragris.com>:
> and gcc. My question is: ¿What kind of tools use you, the kernel gurus, to
> write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?

A compiler and a text editor is all you need, your combination is a
perfectly well working combination.

MfG, JBG

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Re: kernel development environment

[Alessandro Amici]

On Saturday 04 December 2004 18:52, Miguel Angel Flores wrote:
> My actual development environment consists in a scratch vim editor,
> diff, patch
> and gcc. My question is: ¿What kind of tools use you, the kernel gurus, to
> write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?

At the very minimum you need to add grep to your tool set.
It will save you a lot of flames :)

Alessandro
www.b-open-solutions.it

Re: kernel development environment

[Miguel Angel Flores]

Alessandro Amici wrote:

>At the very minimum you need to add grep to your tool set.
>It will save you a lot of flames :)
>  
>
As I can see the kernel hacker tools are the standard GNU tools. I'm in 
the correct way ;)

Thank you.

Re: kernel development environment

[Alessandro Amici]

Miguel

On Saturday 04 December 2004 21:52, Miguel Angel Flores wrote:
> Alessandro Amici wrote:
> >At the very minimum you need to add grep to your tool set.
> >It will save you a lot of flames :)
>
> As I can see the kernel hacker tools are the standard GNU tools. I'm in
> the correct way ;)

Well, I'm not exactly a kernel hacker even if I did some minor driver work in 
the past, so don't rate my advice too high :)

Anyhow, I lurk l-k regularly and most of the developing tools that appear in 
discussions among real kernel hackers appear to be the standard GNU tools.

I did personally try out some of the open source IDE like sourcenav and 
kdevelop, but the raw size of the kernel code pushed them to or beyond their 
limits. That was a couple of years ago things may have changed.

Other stuff that come to mind are: a decent mailer (Mozilla Mail should 
qualify :), a decent irc client, bk or if you prefer cvs. I saw ctags cited 
at times, but I didn't use it myself. 

Hope this helps,
Alessandro
www.b-open-solutions.it

Re: kernel development environment

[Michal Schmidt]

Lee Revell wrote:
> In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
> clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.

Mozilla works fine if you send patches as attachments.

Michal

Re: kernel development environment

[Lee Revell]

On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:37 +0100, Alessandro Amici wrote:
> a decent mailer (Mozilla Mail should 
> qualify :)

I hope you are kidding.

In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.

Use a mailer that does the Right Thing by default like Evolution.

Lee

Re: kernel development environment

[Roger Luethi]

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:52:58 +0100, Miguel Angel Flores wrote:
> write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?

cscope is useful.

Re: kernel development environment

[Lee Revell]

On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:40 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
> > clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.
> 
> Mozilla works fine if you send patches as attachments.
> 

I still say it's broken.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/22/488

Lee

Re: kernel development environment

[Randy.Dunlap]

Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:40 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> 
>>Lee Revell wrote:
>>
>>>In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
>>>clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.
>>
>>Mozilla works fine if you send patches as attachments.
>>
> 
> 
> I still say it's broken.
> 
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/22/488

so don't use copy-paste.  that idea is broken.

otoh, netscape/mozilla/thunderbird mail
all work fine (except that attachments are required,
instead of being able to insert patches inline).

-- 
~Randy

Re: kernel development environment

[Lee Revell]

On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 15:37 -0800, Randy.Dunlap wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > I still say it's broken.
> > 
> > http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/22/488
> 
> so don't use copy-paste.  that idea is broken.
> 

diff foo bar | xclip works perfectly with my mailer and does not require
a temporary file.  There is no good reason for this not to work in
mozilla.  Therefore it's a bug.

> otoh, netscape/mozilla/thunderbird mail
> all work fine (except that attachments are required,
> instead of being able to insert patches inline).
> 

I am aware that a workaround is available.  Doesn't mean it's not a bug.

Lee

Re: kernel development environment

[Jim Nelson]

Randy.Dunlap wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:40 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
>>
>>> Lee Revell wrote:
>>>
>>>> In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
>>>> clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mozilla works fine if you send patches as attachments.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I still say it's broken.
>>
>> http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/22/488
> 
> 
> so don't use copy-paste.  that idea is broken.
> 
> otoh, netscape/mozilla/thunderbird mail
> all work fine (except that attachments are required,
> instead of being able to insert patches inline).
> 

After inadvertently helping to discover the bug in Mozilla, I use the sendpatchset 
script written by Paul Jackson at:

http://www.speakeasy.org/~pj99/sgi/sendpatchset

That lets people's patch-collecting scripts work properly, since (apparently) most 
of the m choke on the MIME headers from attachments.

If you need to connect directly to your ISP, Paul sent me a fix I can forward.

Re: kernel development environment

[Michal Schmidt]

Lee Revell wrote:
> diff foo bar | xclip works perfectly with my mailer and does not
> require a temporary file.

Pasting from xclip to Mozilla Thunderbird works for me IFF the selection 
is 4096 bytes or less. But it looks like a bug in xclip, not Mozilla. 
Try this:

$ (for i in `seq 1 4096`; do echo -n 'a'; done) | xclip
$ xclip -o
aaaaaaaaaaaa......aaa

$ (for i in `seq 1 4097`; do echo -n 'a'; done) | xclip
$ xclip -o
[hangs]

This is with SuSE 8.2 and xclip from a Debian package 
xclip_0.08-4_i386.deb .

> There is no good reason for this not to work in mozilla.
 > Therefore it's a bug.

Not a Mozilla bug.

Michal

Re: kernel development environment

[Lee Revell]

On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 01:34 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> > There is no good reason for this not to work in mozilla.
>  > Therefore it's a bug.
> 
> Not a Mozilla bug.

Interesting, I will see if I can confirm your results.  Anyway this is
wandering OT, let's just say you should make sure your mailer doesn't
mangle patches.

Lee

Re: kernel development environment

[Alan Cox]

On Sad, 2004-12-04 at 17:52, Miguel Angel Flores wrote:
> My actual development environment consists in a scratch vim editor, 
> diff, patch
> and gcc. My question is: ¿What kind of tools use you, the kernel gurus, to
> write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?

Editor, compiler and at least two PC's, and occasionally gdbstubs

Re: kernel development environment

[Herbert Poetzl]

On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 05:41:59PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sad, 2004-12-04 at 17:52, Miguel Angel Flores wrote:
> > My actual development environment consists in a scratch vim editor, 
> > diff, patch
> > and gcc. My question is: ¿What kind of tools use you, the kernel gurus, to
> > write and debug code? ¿It's enough with vi and gcc?
> 
> Editor, compiler and at least two PC's, and occasionally gdbstubs

although I do not consider myself a 'kernel guru' ...

cscope and ctags will help with code navigation
QEMU and UML are good choices to do kernel testing
and if necessary debugging ...

HTH,
Herbert

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Re: kernel development environment

[Baruch Even]

Michal Schmidt wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> 
>> diff foo bar | xclip works perfectly with my mailer and does not
>> require a temporary file.
> 
> 
> Pasting from xclip to Mozilla Thunderbird works for me IFF the selection 
> is 4096 bytes or less. But it looks like a bug in xclip, not Mozilla. 
> Try this:
> 
> $ (for i in `seq 1 4096`; do echo -n 'a'; done) | xclip
> $ xclip -o
> aaaaaaaaaaaa......aaa
> 
> $ (for i in `seq 1 4097`; do echo -n 'a'; done) | xclip
> $ xclip -o
> [hangs]
> 
> This is with SuSE 8.2 and xclip from a Debian package 
> xclip_0.08-4_i386.deb .

I've done some work on xclip in Debian so I thought to test it. It 
doesn't happen to me on my Debian testing with xclip 0.08-4

After 4k of transfers the clipboard protocol means sending multiple 
messages, I've did some fixes in that area a while ago and didn't hear 
of any problems in that area.

I'd be happy to hear of such problems, directly or in the Debian BTS.

Baruch

Re: kernel development environment

[Bill Davidsen]

Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 22:40 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> 
>>Lee Revell wrote:
>>
>>>In case you did not get the joke, Mozilla Mail is one of the WORST mail
>>>clients for handling kernel patches.  See the list archives.
>>
>>Mozilla works fine if you send patches as attachments.
>>
> 
> 
> I still say it's broken.
> 
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/22/488

The process of drag and drop converts tabs to blanks, among other evils. 
You are arguing about the best way to do the wrong thing, like rewriting 
a bubble sort in assembler. The correct tool is attach to preserve 
whatever is in the original.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   CTO TMR Associates, Inc
   Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979