Groklaw: How The Kernel Development Process Works

“There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about how code
actually gets into the Linux kernel. People are claiming that code
can just get ‘slipped into’ the main kernel tree without realizing
where it really came from, or without any sort of review process.
Obviously they have never actually tried to get a major kernel
patch accepted, otherwise they would not be making these kinds of
claims 🙂

“First, what do we mean when we speak of a ‘patch’? In order to
get any kind of change accepted into the kernel, a developer has to
generate something called a ‘patch’ and send it to the maintainer
of the code they are changing (more on that process below.) To do
this, they make the changes needed to the specific part of the
kernel that they wish to modify, and then run a tool called ‘diff’.
This tool generates a human readable file that shows exactly what
lines of code were modified, and what they were changed
into…”

Complete
Story