Review Tags, Sign-Off and the Developer Certificate of Origin
Kernel patches carry short lines at the bottom recording who wrote them, who reviewed them and who tested them. The sign-off line is a legal statement, the Developer Certificate of Origin, in which you assert you have the right to contribute this code. Other tags accumulate as reviewers respond and must be carried forward into your next version. A patch without a sign-off cannot be merged at all, no matter how good it is.
Questions this Concept answers
- What does adding your sign-off line to a patch actually assert?
Submitting patches: the essential guide to getting your code into the kernel
This is the kernel's official guide to getting a change accepted. Its core is the trailer block at the bottom of a patch: the Signed-off-by line, which is a legal statement called the Developer's Cer…