Contributors will need to `register for the mailing list <https://mails.dpdk.org/listinfo/dev>`_ in order to submit patches.
It is also worth registering for the DPDK `Patchwork <https://patches.dpdk.org/project/dpdk/list/>`_
-If you are using the GitHub service, you can link your repository to
-the ``travis-ci.org`` build service. When you push patches to your GitHub
-repository, the travis service will automatically build your changes.
+If you are using the GitHub service, pushing to a branch will trigger GitHub
+Actions to automatically build your changes and run unit tests and ABI checks.
+
+Additionally, a Travis configuration is available in DPDK but Travis free usage
+is limited to a few builds.
+You can link your repository to the ``travis-ci.com`` build service.
The development process requires some familiarity with the ``git`` version control system.
Refer to the `Pro Git Book <http://www.git-scm.com/book/>`_ for further information.
The path to the original Linux script must be set in the environment variable ``DPDK_CHECKPATCH_PATH``.
-Spell checking of commonly misspelled words
-can be enabled by downloading the codespell dictionary::
+Spell checking of commonly misspelled words is enabled
+by default if installed in ``/usr/share/codespell/dictionary.txt``.
+A different dictionary path can be specified
+in the environment variable ``DPDK_CHECKPATCH_CODESPELL``.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codespell-project/codespell/master/codespell_lib/data/dictionary.txt
+There is a DPDK script to build an adjusted dictionary
+from the multiple codespell dictionaries::
-The path to the downloaded ``dictionary.txt`` must be set
-in the environment variable ``DPDK_CHECKPATCH_CODESPELL``.
+ git clone https://github.com/codespell-project/codespell.git
+ devtools/build-dict.sh codespell/ > codespell-dpdk.txt
Environment variables required by the development tools,
are loaded from the following files, in order of preference::
By default, ABI compatibility checks are disabled.
To enable them, a reference version must be selected via the environment
-variable ``DPDK_ABI_REF_VERSION``.
+variable ``DPDK_ABI_REF_VERSION``. Contributors should ordinarily reference the
+git tag of the most recent release of DPDK in ``DPDK_ABI_REF_VERSION``.
The ``devtools/test-meson-builds.sh`` script then build this reference version
in a temporary directory and store the results in a subfolder of the current