On 2/22/07, Uwe Hermann <uwe@hermann-uwe.de> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 01:15:09PM +0100, Uwe Hermann wrote:
OK, how about this procedure (I don't really care anymore whether it's compatible with the way it works in Linux, it should only be legally "bullet-proof"):
* Everyone who creates or modifies a patch adds his Signed-off-by.
* The person who finally commits the patch adds his/her Signed-off-by, too (if it's not already there anyway).
And puts in the commit line from svn, e.g. Commited revision 204
* The Acked-by is completely separated from that. You send an Acked-by when you think this patch can be committed. You don't have to modify a patch for an Acked-by, you can just send it to say "I think this patch is ok".
* If a certain version of a patch received two Acked-by's by two different people, it can be committed. Ergo, every commit message will have 1 or more Signed-off-by lines which build a "chain of trust" for legal reasons, _and_ it will have 2 or more Acked-by lines which enforce our review process.
* The Acked-by's must be for exactly the same version of the patch. Acked-by's for previous versions of the patch are meaningless, they are not added to the commit message, only those for the exact incarnation of the patch which gets committed.
* So yes, it is possible to post
- A patch with only a Sign-off-by: You modified the code, but don't want it to be committed, yet. - A patch with a Signed-off-by and an Acked-by: You modified the patch and you think it can be commited. - An email with just an Acked-by: You didn't touch the patch at all, but you think it can be committed.
No comments, no objections? Shall I update the wiki with this procedure and shall we use it from now on?
I.e., you sign-off everything you touch or apply, you can ack your own patches, and any commit must get at least to acks (e.g. yours and that of one further developer).
I think I understand this now, and it is ok by me, if the line Commit appears in a message which is telling us a commit happened. I think it is important that we know if a patch has been committed. There have been some big patches lately that were in an undertermined state because they got signed off, and acked, and never committed, and i could not tell what had happened. So if you have a thread, and you see signed-off and acked lines, but no commit lines, you can assume the patch was not committed. Right now, you just can not tell. So if you signed off a patch, you are also going to ack it in the same email in most cases; this seems a little weird to me, I just assumed signed-off-by could apply acked-by, but I guess not? thanks ron