Commit 25fb1013 authored Jan 12, 2025 by Miguel Ojeda Committed by Jonathan Corbet Jan 13, 2025

docs: submitting-patches: clarify difference between Acked-by and Reviewed-by



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@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250112152946.761150-3-ojeda@kernel.org

parent cd9123ee

Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst

+6 −0

Original line number	Diff line number	Diff line
		@@ -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