[LinuxBIOS] r2550 - trunk/LinuxBIOSv2/util/flashrom

Uwe Hermann uwe at hermann-uwe.de
Thu Feb 8 02:43:52 CET 2007


On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 10:57:42PM +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> svn at openbios.org wrote:
> > Signed-off-by: Adam Kaufman <adam.kaufman at pinnacle.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Stefan Reinauer <stepan at coresystems.de>
> > Acked-by: Stefan Reinauer <stepan at coresystems.de>
> > Acked-by: Adam Kaufman <adam.kaufman at pinnacle.com>
> 
> It seems there is still some confusion about Signed-off-by
> and Acked-by. The meaning of Acked-by is a real subset of
> Signed-off-by. So acking a patch you already signed off
> for is totally meaningless and should be avoided. The
> Linux kernel guys never ack and sign off the same patch.

I was going to reply to this, too, but for another reason.
The last 'Acked-by: Adam Kaufman <adam.kaufman at pinnacle.com>'
was not posted publically by Adam anywhere as far as I can
see, so it should not appear in the commit message.

As for the meaning of Acked-by, I'm not so sure. We currently use
Signed-off-by as a tagging of "I wrote (parts of) this code"
(i.e. is has legal importance), and the Acked-by merely as
"ok, looks fine" indicator (but you didn't write the code).

Not sure how exactly the Linux kernel folks use these...

Sample scenario: Developer A posts a patch with a Signed-off-by,
you (developer B) modify/improve it and add your own Signed-off-by.

Then someone else (developer C) improves the patch even further, and
adds his Signed-off-by. Now you (B) post an Acked-by for this last
revision of the patch, i.e.

Signed-off-by: A
Signed-off-by: B
Signed-off-by: C
Acked-by: B

This makes sense to me. What would probably _not_ make any sense is

Signed-off-by: A
Signed-off-by: B
Acked-by: B

because you ack your own patch here, which defeats our purpose of the
Acked-by tag (enforce review by at least one developer).

Also, I don't think that a Signed-off-by necessarily means that you
ack the patch. It's possible that you just posted an improved version
of the patch (and added your Signed-off-by), but you still think that
it's not good enough to be committed, i.e. you don't want to ack it
at the moment...


Uwe.
-- 
http://www.hermann-uwe.de  | http://www.holsham-traders.de
http://www.crazy-hacks.org | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/attachments/20070208/8028459a/attachment.sig>


More information about the coreboot mailing list