Newcomers to the kernel need to learn the different tags that are used in commit messages and when to apply them. Acked-by is sometimes misunderstood, since the documentation did not really clarify (up to the previous commit) when it should be used, especially compared to Reviewed-by. The previous commit already clarified who the usual providers of Acked-by tags are, with examples. Thus provide a clarification paragraph for the comparison with Reviewed-by, and give a couple examples reusing the cases given above, in the previous commit. Acked-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst index c7a28af235f7..7b0ac7370cb1 100644 --- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst +++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst @@ -480,6 +480,12 @@ mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me" into an Acked-by: (but note that it is usually better to ask for an explicit ack). +Acked-by: is also less formal than Reviewed-by:. For instance, maintainers may +use it to signify that they are OK with a patch landing, but they may not have +reviewed it as thoroughly as if a Reviewed-by: was provided. Similarly, a key +user may not have carried out a technical review of the patch, yet they may be +satisfied with the general approach, the feature or the user-facing interface. + Acked-by: does not necessarily indicate acknowledgement of the entire patch. For example, if a patch affects multiple subsystems and has an Acked-by: from one subsystem maintainer then this usually indicates acknowledgement of just -- 2.48.0
