22210051

I want to write a book - probably a silly idea.

The book would be about Design Patterns used in the Linux Kernel. Maybe call it

Linux Kernel Patterns

The target audience would be programmers who want to understand the Linux kernel and be able to develop code for it. It should cover Patterns in the human development process as well as patterns in the code.

It might be divided into parts:

Development patterns

External interface patterns

Internal interface patterns

Locking patterns

Development patterns

subsystem maintainers and mailing lists

development/stable cycle

developer-own trees.

If you make an incompatable interface change, make sure old users wont compile.

External interface patterns

how to call userspace

ioctls

filehandles for everything (FUTEX)

internal interface patterns

Negative error numbers, in integers and pointers.

Switched interfaces / helper functions

operations structures with labels

locking patterns

cache update : test / allocate / test-and-insert

dec_and_lock

General

Make the common path fast, and the uncommon path just work.

Defensive: check all user input, rate limit warning, limit resources that can be consumed by the unprivileged.