How to read one
Each is a delta. Start at the version that introduced what you care about, and read the sections it names in the earlier ones: the acceptance tests are numbered continuously (T1
onward), the public names are frozen in a numbered section per version, and a rule that moved
says where it moved from.
Two conventions worth knowing before you open one. MUST, MUST NOT and SHOULD are used in the
RFC 2119 sense. And every specification carries a section on what building that version
settled, including the defects an independent review found and what was done about each: those
sections are the honest part, and they are where a reader learns what the document got wrong
before it was right.
What is on this site instead
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- Architecture: how the kernel is shaped, and why.
- How this is built · Get started · Why.