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docs: submitting-patches: clarify difference between Acked-by and Rev…
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…iewed-by

Newcomers to the kernel need to learn the different tags that are
used in commit messages and when to apply them. Acked-by is sometimes
misunderstood, since the documentation did not really clarify (up to
the previous commit) when it should be used, especially compared to
Reviewed-by.

The previous commit already clarified who the usual providers of Acked-by
tags are, with examples. Thus provide a clarification paragraph for
the comparison with Reviewed-by, and give a couple examples reusing the
cases given above, in the previous commit.

Acked-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250112152946.761150-3-ojeda@kernel.org
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ojeda authored and Jonathan Corbet committed Jan 13, 2025
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6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
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Expand Up @@ -480,6 +480,12 @@ mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me"
into an Acked-by: (but note that it is usually better to ask for an
explicit ack).

Acked-by: is also less formal than Reviewed-by:. For instance, maintainers may
use it to signify that they are OK with a patch landing, but they may not have
reviewed it as thoroughly as if a Reviewed-by: was provided. Similarly, a key
user may not have carried out a technical review of the patch, yet they may be
satisfied with the general approach, the feature or the user-facing interface.

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
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