Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst

Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst

File Facts

System
Linux kernel
Corpus path
Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
Extension
.rst
Size
23958 bytes
Lines
573
Domain
Support Tooling And Documentation
Bucket
Documentation
Inferred role
Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
Status
atlas-only

Why This File Exists

Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.

Dependency Surface

Detected Declarations

Annotated Snippet

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0

.. _netdev-FAQ:

=============================
Networking subsystem (netdev)
=============================

tl;dr
-----

 - designate your patch to a tree - ``[PATCH net]`` or ``[PATCH net-next]``
 - for fixes the ``Fixes:`` tag is required, regardless of the tree
 - don't post large series (> 15 patches), break them up
 - don't repost your patches within one 24h period
 - reverse xmas tree

netdev
------

netdev is a mailing list for all network-related Linux stuff.  This
includes anything found under net/ (i.e. core code like IPv6) and
drivers/net (i.e. hardware specific drivers) in the Linux source tree.

Note that some subsystems (e.g. wireless drivers) which have a high
volume of traffic have their own specific mailing lists and trees.

Like many other Linux mailing lists, the netdev list is hosted at
kernel.org with archives available at https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/.

Aside from subsystems like those mentioned above, all network-related
Linux development (i.e. RFC, review, comments, etc.) takes place on
netdev.

Development cycle
-----------------

Here is a bit of background information on
the cadence of Linux development.  Each new release starts off with a
two week "merge window" where the main maintainers feed their new stuff
to Linus for merging into the mainline tree.  After the two weeks, the
merge window is closed, and it is called/tagged ``-rc1``.  No new
features get mainlined after this -- only fixes to the rc1 content are
expected.  After roughly a week of collecting fixes to the rc1 content,
rc2 is released.  This repeats on a roughly weekly basis until rc7
(typically; sometimes rc6 if things are quiet, or rc8 if things are in a
state of churn), and a week after the last vX.Y-rcN was done, the
official vX.Y is released.

To find out where we are now in the cycle - load the mainline (Linus)
page here:

  https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git

and note the top of the "tags" section.  If it is rc1, it is early in
the dev cycle.  If it was tagged rc7 a week ago, then a release is
probably imminent. If the most recent tag is a final release tag
(without an ``-rcN`` suffix) - we are most likely in a merge window
and ``net-next`` is closed.

git trees and patch flow
------------------------

There are two networking trees (git repositories) in play.  Both are
driven by David Miller, the main network maintainer.  There is the
``net`` tree, and the ``net-next`` tree.  As you can probably guess from
the names, the ``net`` tree is for fixes to existing code already in the
mainline tree from Linus, and ``net-next`` is where the new code goes
for the future release.  You can find the trees here:

Annotation

Implementation Notes