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

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> 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.