Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Keeping reviews meaningful

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>]

Em Mon, 8 Jul 2019 13:59:50 +0200
Wolfram Sang <wsa@the-dreams.de> escreveu:

> Hi Geert,
> 
> > > 1) we need a better distinction between Acked-by: and Reviewed-by: and encourage
> > >    stricter use of that  
> > 
> > Before we had "Reviewed-by", "Acked-by" meant "looks OK to me".
> > Then we got "Reviewed-by" for more thorough reviews.  
> 
> This is what still makes most sense to me. You can express e.g. that you
> like a patch series and approve the general approach taken but haven't
> gone for the gory details -> Acked-by (a short explaining paragraph
> would make sense, then, too)
> 
> Is that old fashioned?
> 
> Acked-by only for maintainers doesn't make sense to me. Neiher does when
> Acked-by has a different meaning for maintainers and non-maintainers.

On my case, when I receive an Acked-by, I assume that this came
from a maintainer (either a subsystem maintainer or a driver
maintainer) - as I expect that non-maintainers (and reviewers)
will either send me a reviewed-by or a tested-by.

When a review a code that will be merged via someone's else tree,
I usually either give:

- Acked-by - if it is something that touches the subsystem
  I maintain and will be merged via some other tree, but I 
  didn't make a comprehensive review;

- Reviewed-by - if I did a comprehensive review. I can either
  be the maintainer or not of the files touched by the patch.

So, I usually expect the others do about the same.

Looking at Documentation/process/5.Posting.rst:

	 - Acked-by: indicates an agreement by another developer (often a
	   maintainer of the relevant code) that the patch is appropriate for
	   inclusion into the kernel.

	 - Reviewed-by: the named developer has reviewed the patch for correctness;
	   see the reviewer's statement in :ref:`Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst <submittingpatches>`
	   for more detail.

I guess the descriptions are already enough to describe those
tags.

Thanks,
Mauro