Re: RFC: reviewer's statement of oversight

[David Chinner]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 10:49:20AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Neil Brown <neilb@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > + (b) Any problems, concerns, or questions relating to the patch have been
> > > +     communicated back to the submitter.  I am satisfied with how the
> > > +     submitter has responded to my comments.
> > 
> > This seems more detailed that necessary.  The process (communicated
> > back / responded) is not really relevant.
> 
> Instead, it seems to me that the process is crucially important.
> Reviewed-by shouldn't be a rubber stamp that somebody applies to a
> patch; I think it should really imply that issues of interest have been
> communicated to the developers.  If we are setting expectations for what
> Reviewed-by means, I would prefer to leave an explicit mention of
> communication in there. 

I couldn't agree more, Jon.

If we are to have a meaningful reviewed-by tag, it has to be clearly
documented as to what responsibilities it places on the reviewer. If
someone doesn't want to perform a well conducted review, then they
haven't earned the right to issue a Reviewed-by tag - they can use
the Acked-by rubber stamp instead.

FWIW, w.r.t. XFS patches, we already follow both the letter and
intent of your proposed reviewed-by tag for all changes to XFS code
and reviewers are currently listed as Signed-off-by in git-commits
(our internal SCM records the reviewer(s) and the git export script
converts that to s-o-b).  It would be much more meaningful if they
were exported as Reviewed-by under your definition....

IOWs, I fully support your definition of the Reviewed-by tag.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
Principal Engineer
SGI Australian Software Group
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