[GSOC] greetings and request for support for my microproject

[Eugene Syromiatnikov]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 11:57:54PM +0900, Shotaro Gotanda wrote:
> Hello, everyone.

Hello.

> This is Shotaro Gotanda, a graduate student studying computer science
> and a prospective student for the GSOC project.
> 
> Actually, I'm interested in and studying Linux containers these days.
> This is how I'm interested in "namespace support" project
> because this feature is the very feature I want for examining containers.
> 
> For the moment, I'm working on a micro project for implementing
> %namespaces trace class
> which is for tracing namespaces-relevant system calls (referred in [1]).

Thank you for showing your interest in contributing to the strace
project.

> During the process, I'm facing several problems.
> 
> Firstly, I tried checkpatch.pl script (with --no-tree option)
> on previous patches like [2] submitted on the strace-devel mailing list,
> but some ERRORs were detected.
> Please tell me how to decide my patches are correct with the script.

Linux's checkpatch.pl is intended to be a possible guidance and not
a strict requirement (I believe the wording in [1] reflects it; however,
feel free to provide any feedback regarding it); but, you're right,
syscallent files are pretty much special in their formatting,
that is somewhat non-orthodox in order to make it more table-like
in attempt to improve readability; in any case, the formatting
of the code that is subject to change is a good reference point.

> Next, I referred a patch which is made for implementing %creds trace class
> and found several related commits [3,4] which were not mentioned in
> the mailing list.
> Is it allowed to submit only a patch for implementation?

No one can prohibit submitting a patch, but the absence of tests that
properly cover the change is pretty much a blocker for adopting the
change into the master branch.

> or should I make patches for tests and the command line help message?

These are preferred to be part of the same patch.  See, for example
[2][3].

> I'm sorry for my long post,
> but I'm excited to have the opportunity to contribute to my favorite tool.
> 
> Thank you and best regards,
> Shotaro Gotanda
> 
> [1] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html
> [2] https://lists.strace.io/pipermail/strace-devel/2019-December/009294.html
> [3] https://github.com/strace/strace/commit/fe47f40a0de057cb0f9a5d1f94a4b937dcd8b01b
> [4] https://github.com/strace/strace/commit/e9d7d173db7e28c55c69b0f2ee2cb229253b10c3

[1] https://strace.io/wiki/MicroProjects
[2] https://gitlab.com/strace/strace/commit/e15d00536b801ad847efbf4098a9232aa739d216
[3] https://gitlab.com/strace/strace/commit/9679296d56e3c0a948b1b4dcce99fd3c9b253a3d