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

Rafael J. Wysocki rjw at rjwysocki.net
Thu May 29 21:03:28 UTC 2014


On Thursday, May 29, 2014 02:27:53 PM Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> 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.

Well, perhaps we can reserve the Acked-by for maintainers and add
something like Supported-by for the 2nd meaning.

Rafael



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