Re: Understanding of Acked-By

[Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com>]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:48:06PM +0530, Shreyansh Jain wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 January 2017 08:28 PM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 2017-01-25 13:53, Van Haaren, Harry:
> > > There was an idea (from Thomas) to better document the Acked-by and Reviewed-By in the above thread, which I think is worth doing to make the process clearer. I'll kick off a thread*, and offer to submit a patch for the documentation when a consensus is reached.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > The question that needs to be addressed is "What is the most powerful signoff to add as somebody who checked a patch?"
> > 
> > I do not see the benefit of knowing the most powerful.
> > Anyway, the most powerful tags are done by trusted people.
> > And people are trusted after delivering good reviews or patches ;)
> > 
> > The question should be "How to use the tags?"
> > 
> > > The documentation mentions Acked, Reviewed, and Tested by[1], as signoffs that can be commented on patches. The Review Process[2] section mentions Reviewed and Tested by, but nowhere specifically states what any of these indicate.
> > > 
> > > Offered below is my current understanding of the Acked-by; Reviewed-by; and Tested-by tags, in order of least-powerful first:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 3) Tested-by: (least powerful)
> > >   - Indicates having passed testing of functionality, and works as expected for Tester
> > >   - Does NOT include full code review (instead use Reviewed by)
> > >   - Does NOT indicate that the Tester understands architecture (instead use Acked by)
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 2) Reviewed-by:
> > >   - Indicates having passed code-review, checkpatch and compilation testing by Reviewer
> > 
> > Compilation testing is done by the CI.
> > The reviewer must just check the results.
> > 
> > >   - Does NOT include full testing of functionality (instead use Tested-by)
> > >   - Does NOT indicate that the Reviewer understands architecture (instead use Acked by)
> > 
> > I disagree here.
> > The reviewer must understand the impacts of the patch.
> > That's why a Reviewed-by tag is really strong.
> 
> From what I understand, 'Reviewed-by' and 'Acked-by' are the other way
> around.
> - Acked-by is intent that 'I agree with change'.
> - Reviewed-by is 'I vouch for the changes' either through review or
>   testing or both.
> 

Other way round in what way - compared to proposed by Harry or by
Thomas? Which do you view as the stronger indication that the patch is
ok?

Regards,
/Bruce