Submitting a Change to Gerrit

Change Requirements

This section contains guidelines for submitting code changes. For more information on how to submit a change using Gerrit, please refer to Working with Gerrit.

Changes are submitted as Git commits. Each commit must contain:

• a short and descriptive subject line that is 72 characters or fewer, followed by a blank line.
• a change description with your logic or reasoning for the changes, followed by a blank line
• a Signed-off-by line, followed by a colon (Signed-off-by:)
• a Change-Id identifier line, followed by a colon (Change-Id:). Gerrit won’t accept patches without this identifier.

A commit with the above details is considered well-formed.

All changes and topics sent to Gerrit must be well-formed. Informationally, commit messages must include:

• what the change does,
• why you chose that approach,
• what assumptions were made, and
• how you know it works – for example, which tests you ran.

Commits must build cleanly when applied in top of each other, thus avoiding breaking bisectability. Commits must pass the scripts/checkpatch.pl requirements. For further detail, see the Coding Style section. Each commit must address a single identifiable issue and must be logically self-contained.

For example: One commit fixes whitespace issues, another renames a function and a third one changes the code’s functionality. An example commit file is illustrated below in detail:

Each commit must contain the following line at the bottom of the commit message:

Signed-off-by: your@email.address

The name in the Signed-off-by line and your email must match the change authorship information. Make sure your .git/config is set up correctly. Always submit the full set of changes via Gerrit.

When a change is included in the set to enable the other changes, but it will not be part of the final set, let the reviewers know this. Use RFCs to send work proposals, progress snapshots of your work, or to get early feedback on features or changes that will affect multiple areas in the code base.

Before submitting, ensure each commit conforms with the coding and contribution guidelines of the project found in Change Requirements.

If you are submitting a change that has someone else’s Signed-off-by, please be sure that you explicitly include that person as a Reviewer in Gerrit.