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

[Mimi Zohar]

On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 15:15 -0400, John W. Linville wrote: 
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 03:11:55PM -0400, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I hate to bikeshed this, but "Maintainer-acked-by" seems too long to type...

Agreed, but I don't think its much longer than any of the others. :)

Perhaps more people would feel comfortable adding "Reviewed-by", if they
could limit the scope.  Instead of defining a new tag, perhaps all that
is needed is adding an optional field.  For example, "Reviewed-by
[option]: ", where 'option' could be style, logic, syntax, ...

Mimi