linux staging tree

The Linux Staging Tree, what it is and is not

It's been many months since the Linux Kernel developers conference, where thelinux-staging tree was discussed and role changed. It turns out that peopleare still a bit confused as to what the staging tree is for, and how it works.

So here's a short summary, I'm not going into the history or background here,that's a much longer writeup that I'd be glad to do if people are interested.

The Linux Staging Tree, what it is and is not.

What the Linux Staging tree is

The Linux Staging tree (or just "staging" from now on) is used to hold stand-alone drivers and file systems that are not ready to be merged into the main portion of the Linux kernel tree at this point in time for various technical reasons. It is contained within the main Linux kernel tree so that users can get access to the drivers much easier than before, and to provide acommon place for the development to happen, resolving the "hundreds of different download sites" problem that most out-of-tree drivers have had in the past.

What the Linux Staging tree is not

The staging tree is not a place to dump code and run away, hoping that someoneelse will to the cleanup work for you. While there are developers availableand willing to do this kind of work, you need to get them to agree to"babysit" the code in order for it to be accepted.

Location and Development

The staging tree is now contained within the main Linux kernel source treeat the location drivers/staging/. All development happens within the mainkernel source tree, like any other subsystem within the kernel. This means:

• The linux-next tree contains the latest version of the staging tree,with bugfixes that are about to be merged into Linus's tree, as wellas the patches that are to be merged into the next major kernelrelease.

• If you wish to do work on the staging tree, checkout the linux-nexttree and send patches based on that.

参考文章：

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/linux-staging-update.html