How to send patches to the Ubuntu mailing-list¶

The Ubuntu mailing-list is the place to submit Ubuntu-specific changes, such as Ubuntu kernel configs.

Note

If your patch otherwise applies more generally to the Linux kernel, you should submit your patches upstream instead.

Patches must be sent to the Ubuntu kernel-team mailing list (kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com). If you have not done so already, subscribe to the list before submitting your first patch, as messages from non-subscribers are held for moderation.

To send kernel patches to the mailing list, you should use the git send-email command.

Note

Most of the options explained here do not appear in the man page of git-send-email but git-format-patch instead. They however work the same.

You may want to create a specific identity for keeping common settings when sending kernel patches. The commonly used settings are:

git config set sendemail.ubuntu-kernel.chainReplyTo false
git config set sendemail.ubuntu-kernel.suppresscc true
git config set sendemail.ubuntu-kernel.thread true
git config set sendemail.ubuntu-kernel.to kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com

# And then include these settings with `--identity=ubuntu-kernel`
git send-email --identity=ubuntu-kernel ...

Specify series¶

All patches must be targeted at some series (unstable, noble, …). Specify the targeted series with the --subject-prefix option:

git send-email --subject-prefix="SRU][O/N/J:linux-azure][PATCH" ...

The tags used in this example show that this patchset is targeting the following kernels for an SRU update: oracular, noble, and jammy:linux-azure.

Send a new version of a patchset¶

Mistakes happen; we are all human. If you want to send a new version of your patchset that fixes some issues, you can use the -v, --reroll-count option:

git send-email --subject-prefix=... -v 2

This will generate [PATCH v2] instead of just [PATCH] to indicate that this is a new revision of a patchset.

You should first make sure that your original patchset was rejected by having a NAK/NACK in its thread. You can reply to the email saying that you will send a new version of the patchset.

If you found a mistake you made, you can NAK and say that you will send a new version in the same email.

In the cover letter of the new patchset, describe what was changed compared to the previous submitted version.