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

[Bruno Larsen <blarsen@redhat.com>]

On 17/05/2023 04:28, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 15:40:38 -0400
>> Cc: gdb-patches@sourceware.org, gdb@sourceware.org
>> From: Simon Marchi <simark@simark.ca>
>>
>>> 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.
You are affected by the process, you are absolutely in a position to put 
forward suggestions, especially for making it more straightforward!
>> 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.
> I'd like to hear from more maintainers that this is how they see that
> tag.  My fear is that someone mechanically scans the discussion thread
> for the tags, in which case human-readable qualifications will go
> unnoticed.

That's a fair point. My fear with using rb for partial approval was that 
if a patch needed 2 responsible maintainers to approve it, it might get 
stalled because it never got  an ab tag.

We could have an extra tag like Partially-Approved-By (or 
Partial-Approval), but we would be the first project using it as far as 
I can see and that could make things confusing for people that already 
know the workflow.

>
> All in all, I feel that this aspect of our process is not well
> defined.
>

 > > 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.

My reading of the kernel's documentation of the tag[1] makes it sound 
like it is a partial approval, especially the lines:

|

Acked-by: is not as formal as Signed-off-by:.  It is a record that the acker
has at least reviewed the patch and has indicated acceptance.|

And the only time I saw it used in QEMU seems to corroborate that 
reading. That said, I can be misunderstanding here (english is not my 
native language after all).

[1] 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst?id=HEAD#n441

-- 
Cheers,
Bruno