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>
diff --git a/Documentation/maintainer/index.rst b/Documentation/maintainer/index.rst
index d904e74..f0a6043 100644
--- a/Documentation/maintainer/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/maintainer/index.rst
@@ -13,4 +13,5 @@
rebasing-and-merging
pull-requests
maintainer-entry-profile
+ modifying-patches
diff --git a/Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst b/Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58385d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+.. _modifyingpatches:
+
+Modifying Patches
+=================
+
+If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly
+modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not
+exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to
+rule (c) of the developers certificate of origin, you should ask the submitter
+to rediff, but this is a totally counter-productive waste of time and energy.
+Rule (b) allows you to adjust the code, but then it is very impolite to change
+one submitters code and make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it
+is recommended that you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and
+yours, indicating the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory
+about this, it seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or
+name, all enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious
+that you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example::
+
+ Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
+ [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h]
+ Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org>
+
+This practice is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and
+want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix,
+and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances
+can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one
+which appears in the changelog.
+
+Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practice
+to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
+message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
+here's what we see in a 3.x-stable release::
+
+ Date: Tue Oct 7 07:26:38 2014 -0400
+
+ libata: Un-break ATA blacklist
+
+ commit 1c40279960bcd7d52dbdf1d466b20d24b99176c8 upstream.
+
+And here's what might appear in an older kernel once a patch is backported::
+
+ Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200
+
+ wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay
+
+ [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]
+
+Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
+tracking your trees, and to people trying to troubleshoot bugs in your
+tree.
diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
index 9387d2e..2cacec1 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
@@ -474,52 +474,6 @@
now, but you can do this to mark internal company procedures or just
point out some special detail about the sign-off.
-If you are a subsystem or branch maintainer, sometimes you need to slightly
-modify patches you receive in order to merge them, because the code is not
-exactly the same in your tree and the submitters'. If you stick strictly to
-rule (c), you should ask the submitter to rediff, but this is a totally
-counter-productive waste of time and energy. Rule (b) allows you to adjust
-the code, but then it is very impolite to change one submitter's code and
-make him endorse your bugs. To solve this problem, it is recommended that
-you add a line between the last Signed-off-by header and yours, indicating
-the nature of your changes. While there is nothing mandatory about this, it
-seems like prepending the description with your mail and/or name, all
-enclosed in square brackets, is noticeable enough to make it obvious that
-you are responsible for last-minute changes. Example::
-
- Signed-off-by: Random J Developer <random@developer.example.org>
- [lucky@maintainer.example.org: struct foo moved from foo.c to foo.h]
- Signed-off-by: Lucky K Maintainer <lucky@maintainer.example.org>
-
-This practice is particularly helpful if you maintain a stable branch and
-want at the same time to credit the author, track changes, merge the fix,
-and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that under no circumstances
-can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one
-which appears in the changelog.
-
-Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practice
-to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit
-message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance,
-here's what we see in a 3.x-stable release::
-
- Date: Tue Oct 7 07:26:38 2014 -0400
-
- libata: Un-break ATA blacklist
-
- commit 1c40279960bcd7d52dbdf1d466b20d24b99176c8 upstream.
-
-And here's what might appear in an older kernel once a patch is backported::
-
- Date: Tue May 13 22:12:27 2008 +0200
-
- wireless, airo: waitbusy() won't delay
-
- [backport of 2.6 commit b7acbdfbd1f277c1eb23f344f899cfa4cd0bf36a]
-
-Whatever the format, this information provides a valuable help to people
-tracking your trees, and to people trying to troubleshoot bugs in your
-tree.
-
When to use Acked-by:, Cc:, and Co-developed-by:
------------------------------------------------