( Was [dpdk-dev] [PATCH v4] ethdev: fix MAC address replay, CC-ed are participants of that thread http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-January/056278.html )
Hi All, 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?" 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 - Does NOT include full testing of functionality (instead use Tested-by) - Does NOT indicate that the Reviewer understands architecture (instead use Acked by) 1) Acked-by: (most powerful) - Indicates Reviewed-by, but also: - Acker understands impact to architecture (if any) and agrees with changes - Acker has performed runtime sanity check - Requests "please merge" to maintainer - Level of trust in Acked-by based on previous contributions to DPDK/networking community The above is a suggested interpretation, alternative interpretations welcomed. -Harry [1] http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/contributing/patches.html#commit-messages-body [2] http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/contributing/patches.html#the-review-process * Apologies for the slightly bike-shed topic
