Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v5] Xen PV Device

[Anthony Liguori]

Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:

> On 8 July 2013 15:04, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
>> (Just a nit and responding because this happens commonly).
>>
>> You probably mean Reviewed-by.  Acked-by really means, "I am not the
>> maintainer of this area, I have not reviewed this patch, but I am
>> generally okay with the idea as best I can tell."
>
> Don't you mean "I *am* the maintainer of this area" ?

No.  It's "this looks okay to me".  A maintainer would be expected to do
a more thorough review than just a first pass "this looks okay to me."

> I've always
> assumed it means "as the maintainer I have a potential veto over
> this code change and I am explicitly not exercising it even though
> I may not have done a complete review and/or test"...

"As *a* maintainer".  It's basically, "my opinion here matters so I'm
going to voice my approval."  It's not limited to maintainers though.

>> It's a very low vote of confidence.  I wouldn't apply a patch that only
>> had Acked-bys.
>>
>> OTOH, Reviewed-by means, "I have reviewed the patch and believe it works
>> as described and meets project guidelines".  Based on your review of V4,
>> pretty sure that's what you mean here.
>>
>> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/SubmittingPatches#L392
>>
>> The distinction matters in practice because I have scripts to track
>> patches based on whether they've received Reviewed-bys or not.  I'm
>> often running into cases where people are Acked-by'ing instead of
>> Reviewed-by'ing patches and then wondering why they haven't gotten
>> merged...
>
> I think Andreas is the major exponent of the idea that "acked-by"
> is stronger than "reviewed-by". Regardless, I think we should
> standardise on what we mean by both tags. (Alas the kernel docs
> are not entirely clear about acked-by, though the meaning of
> reviewed-by is certainly clear.)

That's why I referred to them.  They seem clear to me.  Suggestions for
improvement are welcome of course :-)

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>
> thanks
> -- PMM