Acked-by, signed-off-by, vs reviewed-by

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 05:57:54PM -0700, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
> So what actually is the difference between these.  I'm guessing this  
> usage, but it would be nice if this were written in stone somewhere on  
> the wiki:
>
> Acked - I agree with the general idea of what you're doing
> Reviewed - I looked at your changes, and it looks right
> Signed-off - I reviewed and tried your changes, it doesn't bork my use, 
> and it looks right in general
>

It is written in stone, provided a wiki is close enough to a stone. Just hard
to find and probably needs better linking to
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
=====
Signing off and reviewing

X.Org developers may use a number of tags to acknowledge patches, both in a
commit message and when reviewing patches. Here's a short summary for each tag,
please refer to the Linux kernel's Documentation/SubmittingPatches file for
details. The summaries below are copied from that file.

* Signed-off-by: certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to
                 pass it on as a open-source patch.  
* Acked-by: 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. Acked-by:
            does not necessarily indicate acknowledgement of the entire patch.  
* Tested-by: A Tested-by: tag indicates that the patch has been successfully
             tested (in some environment) by the person named. This tag informs
             maintainers that some testing has been performed, provides a means to locate
             testers for future patches, and ensures credit for the testers.  
* Reviewed-by: A Reviewed-by tag is a statement of opinion that the patch is an
               appropriate modification of the kernel without any remaining
               serious technical issues. Any interested reviewer (who has done
               the work) can offer a Reviewed-by tag for a patch. 

Whenever you review a patch on the mailing list or in a bugzilla, feel free to
provide the appropriate tag as a reply email (or a comment on bugzilla).
====

Cheers,
  Peter