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From: Wolfram Sang <wsa@the-dreams.de>
To: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Keeping reviews meaningful
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2019 16:27:38 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20190706142738.GA6893@kunai> (raw)

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In the parts of the Kernel I work with, reviews are usually given by a plain
tag. I think this is not enough to keep a good code quality, so I'll start with
my theses first:

1) we need a better distinction between Acked-by: and Reviewed-by: and encourage
   stricter use of that

2) Reviewed-by should have a description of the review done (and the review not
   done)

3) trivial patches should rather get Acked-by

4) failing the above should be constructively criticized


Some more words about each item:

1) I am definitely not striving for a clear line, that's impossible. Yet, from
what I experience, the overlap between the two became large. It reduces the
extra value a Reviewed-by should have.

2) A short paragraph will usually do. Of course, trust helps a lot, but it
doesn't solve everything. Trusted people can be in a hurry, too, etc. And for
people I don't know, the plain tag doesn't tell me much. Examples for short
descriptions: "I can't say much about the media part, but the I2C part is
proper" or "I also checked the documentation and I think this is a good
approach to overcome the issue" or "All my concerns in the preceding
discussions have been addressed"

3) Again, no hard line on what is trivial can be made. Still, I think it will
add to the extra value of a review tag if it is only applied to something which
is non-trivial, so we should try to have a better distinction.

4) We are in such a need for people reviewing that it can be challenging for
maintainers to be picky about reviews (you can partly include me here). A
kernel-wide movement aiming for a better distinction between ack (= looks good)
and review helps both maintainers and developers, I think.

These things will hopefully help me as a maintainer to better evaluate trust
for a patch based on the tags given. So, I will try that in the I2C subsystem.
I would prefer, though, not to be an island but to have something which is
accepted kernel-wide.

Disclaimer: I am mainly active in the drivers section of Linux. If reviews are
handled differently in other parts, I am all ears.

Well, I am all ears, anyhow. Opinions?

Kind regards,

  Wolfram


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             reply	other threads:[~2019-07-06 14:27 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-07-06 14:27 Wolfram Sang [this message]
2019-07-06 16:52 ` [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Keeping reviews meaningful Leon Romanovsky
2019-07-06 17:17   ` Wolfram Sang
2019-07-08 10:47     ` Jan Kara
2019-07-08 11:47       ` Wolfram Sang
2019-07-15 16:11     ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2019-07-08 11:21 ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2019-07-08 11:59   ` Wolfram Sang
2019-07-15 15:58     ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2019-07-15 17:00       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-07-15 17:11         ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2019-07-16 21:26         ` Wolfram Sang
2019-08-17 21:35         ` Paul Walmsley
2019-08-19  6:57           ` Jan Kara
2019-08-19  7:06             ` Jiri Kosina
2019-08-19  7:06             ` Julia Lawall
2019-08-19  8:04               ` Jan Kara
2019-08-19  8:13                 ` Julia Lawall
2019-08-20 10:22                   ` James Bottomley
2019-08-19  8:26             ` Thomas Gleixner
2019-08-19 16:16               ` Christian Brauner
2019-08-19 19:04                 ` Thomas Gleixner
2019-08-19 21:03                   ` Christian Brauner
2019-07-08 14:57   ` Mark Brown
2019-07-14  9:35 ` Jonathan Cameron
2019-07-14 10:13   ` Thomas Gleixner
2019-07-15  9:10     ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2019-07-16 21:16     ` Wolfram Sang
2019-07-16 21:57       ` Olof Johansson
2019-07-16 22:27         ` Thomas Gleixner
2019-07-17  3:59           ` Randy Dunlap
2019-07-17  7:31             ` Wolfram Sang
2019-07-17 16:05               ` Linus Walleij
2019-07-17 16:40                 ` Wolfram Sang

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