Contribute/SubmitAPatch

All contributions to QEMU are sent as patches to the qemu-devel mailing list. Patch contributions should not be posted on the bug tracker, posted on forums, or externally hosted and linked to.

You get a better chance to get a reply if you follow the LKML rule of send directly to the maintainer of the portion of the patch (see MAINTAINERS file). Also keep attention to reply to all and not just the sender.

Consider also to prefix your patch commit messages with the portion you changed (ie: block or tcg).

Send patches inline so they are easy to reply to with review comments. Do not put patches in attachments.

Patch emails must include a Signed-off-by: line. For more information see SubmittingPatches 1.12.

Follow the coding style and run scripts/checkpatch.pl <patchfile> before submitting. See also:

• QEMU Coding Style
• QEMU Coding Guidelines

Split up longer patches into a patch series of logical code changes. Each change should compile and execute successfully.

For smaller patches in less frequently changed areas of QEMU, consider using the trivial patches process.