On Mon 2017-07-31 16:44:49, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote: > On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 03:34:11PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: > > On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 08:52:36PM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote: > > > > I've been away from kernel development for a bit, but I've returned and > > > > I'm troubled by what seems to be an entrenched and widespread (IMO) > > > > misuse of the "Signed-off-by:" in commits. > > > > > > > > I've now either been asked to sign off RFC quality patches "because its > > > > quicker" on more than one occasion in the last week or so, and I've seen > > > > others signing off code which clearly has no hope of going anywhere near > > > > the kernel. (eg. // commented out lines) > > > > > > > > I was of the impression that Signed-off-by: was intended to be used on > > > > essentially *finished* commits, indicating both readiness for inclusion > > > > upstream and ones ownership of the copyright. > > > > > > > > Even if the intent is *purely* a copyright isue, Signing off > > > > *everything* surely makes it far too easy for people to get junk into > > > > the kernel. > > > > > > I normally sign-off everything... because getting patch without > > > sign-off is nasty. If maintainer gets unclean, but signed-off patch, > > > he can just clean it up, add his sign-off and continue normally. > > > > Yet there are cases with known but unobvious breakage (see below).
Yes, so you point up the breakage in the changelog...
> > > That may or may not be allowed if patch is not signed-off. (We are in
> > > lawyer teritory now.)
> > >
> > > So I'd recommend signing everything, and if patch is considered "not
> > > ready", make it clear in some other way.
> >
> > I think it'd be much better if you could suggest a new marker. Something
> > like "Copyright-but-not-Readiness-Signed-off-by:", "RFC-Signed-off-by:",
> > "WIP-Signed-off-by:", etc.
>
> I use (and saw other people used) "Not-Yet-Signed-off-by:" for this
> purpose.
As I tried to explain, that is problematic.
If I fix the patch, how do I submit it myself?
But you are free to use Subject: [Not ready], or just sprinkle code
with // comments...
Anyway, applying not-ready patch is not something I usually seen
happening. OTOH, not applying patches that were ready months ago is
quite common :-).
Pavel
--
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http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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