Re: [PATCH 1/1] [gdb]: add git trailer information on gdb/MAINTAINERS

Simon Marchi via Gdb
2023-05-16T19:41:37Z

On 5/16/23 13:48, Eli Zaretskii via Gdb-patches wrote:
>> Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 18:41:55 +0200
>> Cc: gdb-patches@sourceware.org, gdb@sourceware.org
>> From: Bruno Larsen <blarsen@redhat.com>
>>
>> On 16/05/2023 18:04, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>>> + Used when a contributor has looked at code and agrees with the changes,
>>>> + but either does not have the authority or doesn't feel comfortable
>>>> + approving the patch (usually due to unfamiliarity with a certain
>>>> + part of the code).
>>> Reviewed-by is used by responsible maintainers as well.
>> I think I need clearer wording then.
>
> I think "both contributors and maintainers" is good enough.
>
>>> I think the above list is incomplete, because there appears to be no
>>> "git trailer" (why do we have to call it "git" trailer, btw? will
>>> that change if we ever switch to a different VCS?) for the situation
>>> where the responsible maintainer does approve some part of the patch,
>>> but not all of it (e.g., because the other parts are not in the
>>> expertise domain of that maintainer). I thought Reviewed-by is such a
>>> trailer, but based on the above I'm beginning to think I was confused.
>>>
>> I wrote the proposal based on how I think the use of trailers works on
>> the QEMU project (I wasn't in it long enough to be sure that I am
>> correct, though). My thinking was that you'd send something like
>> "documentation changes are approved, but someone needs to look at the
>> code, Approved-By ..." or something similar. That said, I just
>> remembered that they also use Ack-By in those situations and the
>> maintainer of the subsystem most affected by a change is the only one to
>> approve the patch, and other relevant maintainers use Ack-By (they have
>> a very different development workflow, with each subsystem maintainer
>> having their own tree and them only being merged into the master tree
>> periodically). I'm pretty open to suggestions, if you think using
>> Acked-By or some other trailer is better. That is the reason I'm doing
>> this :-)
>
> I don't think I'm in a position to put forward suggestions, since I'm
> not sure I have a good understanding of the process. I only use
> Approved-By when I can approve the entire patch, not just parts of it.
> But maybe I'm wrong in that.

If this happens, I think it's fine to say "the documentation parts are
approved" and following with your Approved-By. If you want to be
extra-clear, add "but the rest needs to be approved by someone else".
The patch will end up with multiple Approved-Bys.

Speaking of Acked-By, I felt the need to use it recently, where I just
read the commit message, agreed with it, but didn't have time to review
the code itself. I wanted to show that I agreed with the intent of the
patch. I think that's what Acked-By is for. I think we could add it to
that list.

Simon