On Friday 27 January 2017 03:43 PM, Bruce Richardson wrote:

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:48:06PM +0530, Shreyansh Jain wrote:

quoted

On Wednesday 25 January 2017 08:28 PM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:

quoted

2017-01-25 13:53, Van Haaren, Harry:

quoted

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?"

quoted

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.

quoted

  - 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?

Sorry, I should have posted this against Harry's mail rather than
Thomas'.
'Other way round' as compared to Harry's text.
Reviewed-by is a strong indication, in my understanding.

Regards,
/Bruce

-
Shreyansh