[Ksummit-discuss] Reforming Acked-by (was Re: [TOPIC] Encouraging more reviewers)

Mimi Zohar zohar at linux.vnet.ibm.com
Wed May 28 19:11:55 UTC 2014


On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 18:48 +0000, Paul Walmsley wrote: 
> Also long-overdue is a clarification on exactly what "Acked-by" means.
> Right now it is being used for at least two distinct and
> mutually-incompatible purposes:
> 
> 1. A maintainer A for code affected by a patch, who is distinct from a
> maintainer B queuing a patch, has reviewed the patch and has cleared it as
> being OK for maintainer B to send upstream
> 
> 2. A casual review has been done by someone who is not a maintainer for
> the code in question
> 
> What I would propose is to have the first use replaced by a new tag, 
> "Maintainer-acked-by:", and the second use abolished, along with 
> "Acked-by:", and replaced by "Reviewed-by:".

Agreed, "Acked-by" is ambiguous and should be dis-ambiguated.
"Reviewed-by:" is too much of a barrier for people to feel comfortable
using.  Just as the "Maintainer-acked-by:" would imply a subset of the
patch related to the subsystem, "Reviewed-by" needs something similar to
limit its scope.

Mimi



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