On Thu, Jan 08, 2026 at 07:27:17PM +0100, Miguel Ojeda wrote: > On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 5:42 PM Sasha Levin <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > We already have something like this in Documentation/process/howto.rst: > > > > "Before making any actual modifications to the Linux kernel code, it is > > imperative to understand how the code in question works." > > The patch already mentions something similar as well: > > Ensure that you understand your entire submission and are prepared > to respond to review comments. > > And then talks about the maintainers discretion and rejecting etc. at > the bullet list at the bottom, so it seems fairly clear to me, i.e. > that patches may get "rejected outright" if one cannot explain the > submitted series.
I understand that of course. I feel I said it already but perhaps I wasn't clear. The issue is that this is put very softly and in such a way as to lose emphasis: 'You _can_ be more transparent by adding information like this:...' 'As with all contributions, individual maintainers have discretion to choose how they handle the contribution. For example, they _might_:' '[They might] Ask the submitter to explain in more detail about the contribution so that the maintainer can _feel comfortable_ that the submitter fully understands how the code works.' All of this is a little weak and reads like 'please if you could take the trouble we'd love if you'd maybe abide by this'. The point is to say very clearly - we won't accept slop. For all the various arguments I've seen on here, none have amounted to us being happy to, so I hope that it's not too egregious to ask for that kind of emphasis. > > Cheers, > Miguel Thanks, Lorenzo
