FreeBSD hacker 101

[Xin LI]

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william wong wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Are there any docments or pointers to get me started hacking around my
> 6.3asap? Building toochains, submitting patches etc.... or i just
> follow most
> of the conventions in the Linux kernel development community?

I think it's nothing "that" different.  A typical way is that you find
something you are not happy with, i.e. what you think FreeBSD is lacking
of, do some proof of concept work, discuss it in the mailing list,
refine your work, submit patch, become a committer :-)

The only "difference" as far as I can tell is that FreeBSD tends to have
stricter code style guidelines (the only exceptions are what we call
"vendor code" which is maintained outside, this includes toolchains,
device drivers that is supported by vendors, in order to make future
upgrades easier).  However, unlike some other bad code style guidelines,
FreeBSD's coding style is very well documented (as in style(9)), and
following the guideline will make your code easier to read (e.g. think
about how to find the implementation with grep(1)?  Yes, grep ^function.).

We eager to see contributions from all aspects, but if you have no idea
for your own, or is looking for something to give a shot, you can check
out our projects idea page at http://www.freebsd.org/projects/ideas/ .

Small contributions, like making more documentation about various
sysctl's, etc. are more suitable for those who just started to learn
about the code and can not invest a lot of whole bunch of time on
FreeBSD (yet), are welcomed as well.

Another good start is to query our PR database (
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi ) and see if there is
something you have interest, but there is no fix, or there is a fix but
stayed for a long time and push them.

Cheers,
- --
Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net>	http://www.delphij.net/
FreeBSD - The Power to Serve!
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