document Acked-by:

Explain what we use Acked-by: for, and how it differs from Signed-off-by:

Acked-by: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
This commit is contained in:
Andrew Morton 2007-06-08 13:46:45 -07:00 committed by Linus Torvalds
parent a47653fc26
commit 0f44cd23a5

View file

@ -340,8 +340,32 @@ now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
point out some special detail about the sign-off.
13) When to use Acked-by:
13) The canonical patch format
The Signed-off-by: tag indicates that the signer was involved in the
development of the patch, or that he/she was in the patch's delivery path.
If a person was not directly involved in the preparation or handling of a
patch but wishes to signify and record their approval of it then they can
arrange to have an Acked-by: line added to the patch's changelog.
Acked-by: is often used by the maintainer of the affected code when that
maintainer neither contributed to nor forwarded the patch.
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. Hence patch
mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me"
into an Acked-by:.
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
the part which affects that maintainer's code. Judgement should be used here.
When in doubt people should refer to the original discussion in the mailing
list archives.
14) The canonical patch format
The canonical patch subject line is: