Re: [Qemu-devel] We need more reviewers/maintainers!!

["Andreas Färber" <afaerber@suse.de>]

Am 13.03.2012 14:27, schrieb Avi Kivity:
> On 03/12/2012 08:18 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>>>
>>> * Reviewed-by: Full Name <email>
>>>
>>>   A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an appropriate
>>>   modification without any remaining serious technical issues. Any interested
>>>   reviewer (who has done the work) can offer a Reviewed-by tag for a patch.
>>>
>>>
>>> My understanding until now was that both Acked-by and Reviewed-by were tags
>>> reserved to people with privileges to write into the repository.
>>
>> Anybody should be allowed to give his own Acked-by or Reviewed-by, not
>> just maintainers. Of course an acked-by from the maintainer of the area
>> the patch is touching has a different weight.
> 
> To me, an Ack is reserved for people who have authority in an area,
> either by being the formal maintainer of the subsystem, or by just being
> an expert in that area.  An Acked-by short-circuit's the following exchange:
> 
>   Author: submit patch P
>   Maintainer: P touches subsystem X, what do Expert E and sub-maintainer
> M have to say about it?
>   E, M: looks okay
> 
> The acked-by allows the maintainer to skip the exchange.  Of course
> usually patches should go through a submaintainer tree, but sometimes
> this is not feasible, either because there is no tree for that area, or
> because the patch or patchset touches many subsystems.
> 
> So an ack should come from people who expect to be asked about the patch.

The way I saw it, Acked-by means that the person asserts that the
contents of the change is sensible, and when I use it I either tested it
myself or am absolutely sure it doesn't break the build.

Reviewed-by I use by comparison to assert that a patch reasonably
conforms to our Coding guidelines, has an SoB and does nothing obviously
stupid but that I did not bother to smoke-test on my system.

What I have wondered is, is there any semantic difference between "Ack",
"Acked", "ACK" and "Acked-by: name <email>"? I.e., when someone replies
with "Ack", should one document that as an Acked-by for a PULL?

Similarly, should "Looks good." be translated to Reviewed-by or does it
mean less?

Andreas

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