We need a doc to guide new contributors patch submission [was: Re: Working on -e trace]

[Philippe Ombredanne]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 4:19 AM, haris iqbal <haris.phnx at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 3:15 AM, Dmitry V. Levin <ldv at altlinux.org> wrote:
[...]
>> Don't you see that the patch you are sending out is corrupted?
>
> Are you talking about the date in the first line? Or is it something else?
>
>> Is it really so difficult to submit an applicable patch?
>
> I am trying, I apologize if its really a simple thing.

Haris:
actually, we all think this is really a simple thing and take it for granted.
Most strace contributors are experienced contributors to Linux
distros, kernel, libc or similar and can probably submit a patch in
their sleep.

Yet I see most new contributors struggle to submit a clean patch to
the strace list.
So this must not be that easy after all:
and if this is not easy to so many then this is not your fault, but _OUR_ fault!

Hard is not a good thing here:
This creates an artificial barrier to new contributions. (Some might
say that this a good thing? I think not)
This wastes the precious time of Dmitry -strace's benevolent
maintainer for life ;)- when reviewing mundane issues of patch or code
formatting rather than dealing with the substance (or in some cases
the lack of it).

So let's come with a new wiki page to guide newbies through the paces
of submitting strace patches!
Something along the lines of these guides [1] and [2]?
(which you can check out: strace is much simpler than the kernel
though we use the same "ways")
(and since you will be going through this, may be you could take a
stab at writing a mini doc yourself as you go? and posting it here?)
wink-wink

Hopefully, we can make it easier for you and everyone to submit patches.

[1] http://kernelnewbies.org/FirstKernelPatch
[2] https://github.com/gregkh/kernel-tutorial/blob/master/kernel_patch_tutorial.pdf
-- 
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne