Creating and Editing patches for the Linux Kernel with git

There’s a lot of posts and references about submitting patches to the Linux kernel or projects that receive patches in file/email format.

The idea here is to have a quick guide about the basic commands to get things done.

Workflow

First checkout the working tree. For Linux it’s usually the stable at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git or Linus at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/ containing latest changes not yet released.

$ git checkout https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git

Then, edit your required files. It’s advised that you keep meaningful functionality together and break them into different commits (that will generate separate patches). In case of a small change, usually one commit is enough.

#  Add your files to staging area
$ git add [file or files]
# If you have a lot of changes in the same file and parts should go to different commits, select which part is staged interactively with
$ git add -p [file if desired]
# Commit changes with meaningful commit message. Usually look at previous commits to the same file or subsystem
$ git commit -s -v