docs: submitting-patches: clarify difference between Acked-by and Reviewed-by

Newcomers to the kernel need to learn the different tags that are
used in commit messages and when to apply them. Acked-by is sometimes
misunderstood, since the documentation did not really clarify (up to
the previous commit) when it should be used, especially compared to
Reviewed-by.

The previous commit already clarified who the usual providers of Acked-by
tags are, with examples. Thus provide a clarification paragraph for
the comparison with Reviewed-by, and give a couple examples reusing the
cases given above, in the previous commit.

Acked-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250112152946.761150-3-ojeda@kernel.org

diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
index 1a0669820573d376585312cf54312e2f4b405f90..1a161c092df78104310d9add5f3be3db971f0014 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
@@ -480,6 +480,12 @@ mergers will sometimes manually convert an acker's "yep, looks good to me"
 into an Acked-by: (but note that it is usually better to ask for an
 explicit ack).
 
+Acked-by: is also less formal than Reviewed-by:.  For instance, maintainers may
+use it to signify that they are OK with a patch landing, but they may not have
+reviewed it as thoroughly as if a Reviewed-by: was provided.  Similarly, a key
+user may not have carried out a technical review of the patch, yet they may be
+satisfied with the general approach, the feature or the user-facing interface.
+
 Acked-by: does not necessarily indicate acknowledgement of the entire patch.
 For example, if a patch affects multiple subsystems and has an Acked-by: from
 one subsystem maintainer then this usually indicates acknowledgement of just