Re: avoiding rejects

[Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>]

On Jul 10 2007 12:44, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
>There are many situations where patching the kernel involves adding a new
>item to a list, such as:
>
>- adding a makefile line
>- adding a new #include
>- adding a new Kconfig entry
>- adding a new PCI ID
>- adding a record to feature-removal.txt
>- adding a new sysctl table entry
>- etc
>
>Of course, everyone just sticks the new entry at the end of the existing
>entries.  This strategy carefully maximises the opportunity for patch
>rejects and leads to unhappiness.
>
>Most of these lists are unordered anyway, so inserting the new item at a
>randomly-chosen position is a better approach than just appending it.

As for Makefiles: Sort the list lexicographically. Let the submitter put
it into the right spot.
Example: net/netfilter/Makefile.
There are lots of obj-$(CONFIG_NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_xyz) += xt_xyz.o for example,
which can be sorted without disturbing required linking order or whatnot
(for some directories this seems important).
Benefit: Less rejects of course (not as much as a truly random insert,
but still less than appending) _and_ a sorted list.


	Jan
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