Dear Stephen Warren,
In message 507C3AA4.6050707@wwwdotorg.org you wrote:
Irrespective of the documentation (which I obviously read the way I describe anyway...), the kernel practice is that everyone who writes or commits a patch adds their S-o-b line, and everyone who simply merges a
I'm aware of this.
branch from someone else checks that the provider of the branch added their S-o-b to patches they applied (rather than merged themselves) but does not add their own S-o-b (because it's impossible).
Is such checking really taking place? Are there any tools to support this?
I have often wondered why the merge commits themselves were not signed off by the person performing the merge (which would then logically cover all the commits that got merged). I haven't investigated to find out why though. Doing so would seem to solve your objection about merges.
I'm not only concerned about merges from custodian (or maintainer's, in Linux terminology) trees. For me it also seems reasonable to pull from any other repository instead of using git-am or similar to apply patches from a mailbox file. Herer I also have no way to add any new SoBs.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk