Occasionally, I will forget to link something from the mailing list in this post. To see my full mailing list activity (patches, reviews, and reports), you can view it on lore.kernel.org.

Linux kernel patches

  • Build errors: These are patches to fix various build errors that I found through testing different configurations with LLVM or were exposed by our continuous integration setup. The kernel needs to build in order to be run :)

    • integrity: Eliminate weak definition of arch_get_secureboot() (v1)
    • init/Kconfig: Require a release version of clang-22 for CC_HAS_COUNTED_BY_PTR (v1)

  • Kbuild / Kconfig fixes and improvements: These are changes that I have authored as part of maintaining Kbuild and Kconfig.

    • Documentation: kbuild: Update the debug information notes in reproducible-builds.rst (v1)

  • Miscellaneous fixes and improvements: These are fixes and improvements that don’t fit into a particular category but matter in some way to my other work.

    • tracing: Adjust cmd_check_undefined to show unexpected undefined symbols (v1)

  • Warning fixes: These are patches to fix various warnings that appear with LLVM. I used to go into detail about the different warnings and what they mean, but the important takeaway for this section is that the kernel should build warning free, as all developers should be using CONFIG_WERROR, which will turn these all into failures. Maybe these should be in the build failures section…

    • ARM: multi_v7_defconfig: Drop duplicate CONFIG_TI_PRUSS=m (v1)
    • powerpc/vdso: Drop -DCC_USING_PATCHABLE_FUNCTION_ENTRY from 32-bit flags with clang (v1)
    • drm/amdgpu/discovery: Add braces to case statements in amdgpu_discovery_table_check() (v1)
    • platform/x86: lenovo: wmi-gamezone: Drop gz_chain_head (v1)
    • drm/xe: Fix format specifier for printing pointer differences (v1)
    • dtc: Remove unused dts_version in dtc-lexer.l (v1)
    • extract-cert: Wrap key_pass with '#ifdef USE_PKCS11_ENGINE' (v1)
    • modpost: Declare extra_warn with unused attribute (v1)
    • perf/arm-cmn: Fix resource_size_t printk specifier in arm_cmn_init_dtc() (v1)

Patch handling, review, and input

For the next sections, I link directly to my first response in the thread when possible but there are times where the link is to the main post. My responses can be seen inline by going to the bottom of the thread and clicking on my name.

Reviewing patches that are submitted is incredibly important, as it helps ensure good code quality due to catching mistakes before the patches get accepted and it can help get patches accepted faster, as some maintainers will blindly pick up patches that have been reviewed by someone that they trust.

Issue triage, input, and reporting

The unfortunate thing about working at the intersection of two projects is we will often find bugs that are not strictly related to the project, which require some triage and reporting back to the original author of the breakage so that they can be fixed and not impact our own testing. Some of these bugs fall into that category while others are issues strictly related to this project.

Tooling improvements

These are changes to various tools that we use, such as our continuous integration setup, booting utilities, toolchain building scripts, or other closely related projects such as AOSP’s distribution of LLVM and TuxMake.

Behind the scenes

  • Every day that there is a new linux-next release, I rebase and build a few different kernel trees then boot and runtime test them on several different machines, including a SolidRun Honeycomb LX2, an Ampere Altra Developer Platform, four Intel-based devices, and two AMD-based devices. This is not always visible because I do not report anything unless there is something broken but it can take up to a few hours each day, depending on the amount of churn and issues uncovered.

  • I continue to upload prebuilt, fast versions of LLVM for kernel developers and our continuous integration to use.

  • I submitted the following pull requests.

Special thanks

Special thanks to Google and the Linux Foundation for sponsoring my work.