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Documentation/maintainer: rehome sign-off process

The repeated sign-offs necessary when a subsystem maintainer modifies an
incoming patch has been moved from submitting-patches.rst to
Documentation/maintainer, since the affairs of a subsystem maintainer
are not especially relevant to someone reading a guide for how to submit
their first patch.

Signed-off-by: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200903160545.83185-4-sir@cmpwn.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>

authored by

Drew DeVault and committed by
Jonathan Corbet
4ebdf7be 7433ff33

+51 -46
+1
Documentation/maintainer/index.rst
··· 13 13 rebasing-and-merging 14 14 pull-requests 15 15 maintainer-entry-profile 16 + modifying-patches 16 17
+50
Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst
··· 1 + .. _modifyingpatches: 2 + 3 + Modifying Patches 4 + ================= 5 + 6 + If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly 7 + modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not 8 + exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to 9 + rule (c) of the developers certificate of origin, you should ask the submitter 10 + to rediff, but this is a totally counter-productive waste of time and energy. 11 + Rule (b) allows you to adjust the code, but then it is very impolite to change 12 + one submitters code and make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it 13 + is recommended that you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and 14 + yours, indicating the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory 15 + about this, it seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or 16 + name, all enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious 17 + that you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example:: 18 + 19 + Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org> 20 + [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h] 21 + Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org> 22 + 23 + This practice is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and 24 + want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix, 25 + and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances 26 + can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one 27 + which appears in the changelog. 28 + 29 + Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practice 30 + to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit 31 + message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance, 32 + here's what we see in a 3.x-stable release:: 33 + 34 + Date: Tue Oct 7 07:26:38 2014 -0400 35 + 36 + libata: Un-break ATA blacklist 37 + 38 + commit 1c40279960bcd7d52dbdf1d466b20d24b99176c8 upstream. 39 + 40 + And here's what might appear in an older kernel once a patch is backported:: 41 + 42 + Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200 43 + 44 + wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay 45 + 46 + [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a] 47 + 48 + Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people 49 + tracking your trees, and to people trying to troubleshoot bugs in your 50 + tree.
-46
Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
··· 474 474 now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just 475 475 point out some special detail about the sign-off. 476 476 477 - If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly 478 - modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not 479 - exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to 480 - rule (c), you should ask the submitter to rediff, but this is a totally 481 - counter-productive waste of time and energy. Rule (b) allows you to adjust 482 - the code, but then it is very impolite to change one submitter's code and 483 - make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it is recommended that 484 - you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and yours, indicating 485 - the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory about this, it 486 - seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or name, all 487 - enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious that 488 - you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example:: 489 - 490 - Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org> 491 - [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h] 492 - Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org> 493 - 494 - This practice is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and 495 - want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix, 496 - and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances 497 - can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one 498 - which appears in the changelog. 499 - 500 - Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practice 501 - to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit 502 - message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance, 503 - here's what we see in a 3.x-stable release:: 504 - 505 - Date: Tue Oct 7 07:26:38 2014 -0400 506 - 507 - libata: Un-break ATA blacklist 508 - 509 - commit 1c40279960bcd7d52dbdf1d466b20d24b99176c8 upstream. 510 - 511 - And here's what might appear in an older kernel once a patch is backported:: 512 - 513 - Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200 514 - 515 - wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay 516 - 517 - [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a] 518 - 519 - Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people 520 - tracking your trees, and to people trying to troubleshoot bugs in your 521 - tree. 522 - 523 477 524 478 When to use Acked-by:, Cc:, and Co-developed-by: 525 479 ------------------------------------------------