Need guidance

Flemming Richter Mikkelsen quatrox at gmail.com
Fri Oct 24 17:38:22 CEST 2008


On 2008-10-24, Shashank Bharadwaj <shanka.mns at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I got my freerunner about a month ago. I've been using it ever since
> as my primary phone OM2008.9 on flash and Debian on SD Card. The
> journey so far has been great!
>
> Now I've decided that it's time that I start contributing back to the
> community. I am an electronics engineer and love embedded systems. So
> I thought the best place I can contribute is the kernel. The problem
> is that I don't know how to. Could you guys please give me some
> pointers on how to get started. I've downloaded the code via git and
> browsed it, but couldn't figure where to start.
>
> I have a little knowledge about the linux kernel (though I'm
> hyper-interested and would love to learn) and have some knowledge
> about ARMs (microcontrollers) and it's interfacing devices.
>
> So I'm here looking for some guidance on how and where to contribute.
>
> --
> Regards
> Shashank
> As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of
> darkness surrounding it - Albert Einstein
>
>


I don't know how much you know, so I can only
recommend you what I am doing now (the kernel
stuff is new to me).

If you are new to kernel dev, then you might want to
look at something easy like the charge mode part for
reference. It is very easy to understand and you
already know what it should do (switch between
100mA, 500mA and 1A).

I do not recommend books - they take time to read.
It is faster to learn by playing, and it is more fun.

Generally, I would start playing with small and easy
parts. The most important thing is to have fun while
learning.

Maybe you want to play with GPIO (LED's, etc) just
to be more familiar.

Then maybe write a small kernel module which does
not need to do anything useful. (There is a lot of
resources online on Linux device drivers, etc).

Trying to understand the coupling is more difficult.

I cannot tell what is the best way, but find something
which is rather simple and fun and play around.



More information about the openmoko-kernel mailing list