Re: [PATCH RFC 1/2] MAINTAINERS: Add "R:" designated-reviewers tag

[josh@joshtriplett.org]

On Tue, Jun 03, 2014 at 09:19:49AM +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 12:17:46PM -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
> > On Mon, 2014-06-02 at 12:09 -0700, josh@joshtriplett.org wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 12:05:17PM -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2014-06-02 at 11:55 -0700, josh@joshtriplett.org wrote:
> > > > > this should go along with a change to
> > > > > get_maintainer.pl to add those folks to the CC list.
> > > > 
> > > > Something like this:
> > > 
> > > Yes, exactly.  Given an appropriate commit message,
> > > Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
> > 
> > That's the sort of patch where reviewing is
> > pretty useless.
> > 
> > What it needs is testing, not reviewing.
> > 
> > I tested it for all of 10 seconds.
> 
> From Documentation/SubmittingPatches:
> 
> "         (c) While there may be things that could be improved with this
>              submission, I believe that it is, at this time, (1) a
>              worthwhile modification to the kernel, and (2) free of known
>              issues which would argue against its inclusion.
> .....
> 
> A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an
> appropriate modification of the kernel without any remaining serious
> technical issues."
> 
> So, for someone to say they have reviewed the code and are able to
> say it is free of known issues and has no remaining technical
> issues, they would have had to apply, compile and test the patch,
> yes?
> 
> i.e. Reviewed-by implies both Acked-by, Tested-by and that the code
> is technically sound.

No, not at all.  It implies Acked-by, and that the code is technically
sound (both at the micro-level and in overall architecture/approach),
but does not imply Tested-by; that's a separate tag for a reason.

We should not, for instance, prevent someone from providing a
Reviewed-by (as opposed to an Acked-by) for a driver whose hardware few
people actually have.  There's significant value in code review even
without the ability to test.

> Anyone using Reviewed-by without having actually applied and tested
> the patch is mis-using the tag - they should be using Acked-by: if
> all they have done is read the code in their mail program....

Acked-by and Reviewed-by mean two different things (Reviewed-by being a
superset of Acked-by), and the difference is not "I've applied and
tested this"; that's Tested-by.

- Josh Triplett