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

Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu
Thu May 29 18:27:53 UTC 2014


On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 06:48:47PM +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:".

I agree in general, but if we're going to abolish the 2nd use
entirely, then it's much simpler to keep Acked-by for its original
meaning; it's easier to type, after all.

This is basically I do for ext4 patches today; if someone sends me an
acked-by in the #2 sense, I simply won't add it to the s-o-b section,
and I don't let the fact that someone has asserted that they have done
a casual review to give me a false sense of security; if I still have
to do a deep review, I'm going to catch the casual stuff anyway, and
the fact that a casual review doesn't obviate the need for a careful
review.

But if a senior ext4 developer adds a Reviewed-by:, that does lend a
lot of value to me as a maintainer, since I can trust that certain
folks like Jan and Eric and Lukas and others will do a good job doing
the review, and that actually *does* offload significant amounts of
work off my shoulders.

Cheers,

						- Ted




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