Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:06:14 -0700
From: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
Cc: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>, Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>,
       Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Subject: Re: RFC: reviewer's statement of oversight
Message-Id: <20071008110614.dd671fc7.randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
In-Reply-To: <470A708D.4080905@goop.org>
References: <25555.1191864285@lwn.net>
	<20071008173706.GA12026@uranus.ravnborg.org>
	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0710081939120.10239@fbirervta.pbzchgretzou.qr>
	<470A708D.4080905@goop.org>
Organization: Oracle Linux Eng.
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On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:01:49 -0700 Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:

> Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> >> Acked-by:
> >> Tested-by:
> >>     
> >
> > * Used by random people to express their (dis)like/experience with the 
> > patch.
> >   
> 
> Tested-by is more valuable than acked-by, because its empirical. 
> Acked-by generally means "I don't generally object to the idea of the
> patch, but may not have read beyond the changelog".  Tested-by implies
> "I did something that exercised the patch, and it didn't explode" -
> that's on par with an actual review (ideally all patches would be both
> tested and reviewed).

but Tested-by: doesn't have to involve any "actually looking at/reading
the patch."  Right?

IOW, the patch could be ugly as sin but it works...


> >> Reviewed-by:
> >>     
> >
> > * I am maintaner or an 'important' person and have had a
> >   look at it in depth
> >   
> 
> Hm.  We have a tension here:
> 
>     * there aren't enough reviewers
>     * some reviews are more useful than others
> 
> While a review by a trustworthy person is invaluable, we don't want to
> discourage people from reviewing.  A new reviewer's review may not be
> terribly useful, but a meta-review may help improve it.  Or it could be
> a great review.
> 
> I guess I'm proposing that we also need to expand the reviewer base, and
> to do so we need some kind of reviewer-mentoring or metareview process. 
> Of course that could just be an extra burden on the existing (small)
> trusted reviewer base, but the hope is that over time the reviewer pool
> size grows enough to make the effort worthwhile...
> 
> 
> >> Cc:
> >>     
> >
> > * Used by original submitter to denote additional maintainers it goes to
> > * Parties who should be Cced when an a posteriori question comes up
> >   
> 
> Well, any interested parties, really.  I use it for original bug
> reporters, people who followed up on the report, people who have patches
> in a nearby area, people who are known to be interested in the affected
> subsystem, people who have reviewed previous versions of the patch, etc...

---
~Randy
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