From: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
On Jun 3, kernel commit adbd5886da5f467148b26cca3728ab0e672b3fcc added a new
rule to help patch merging from maintainers, at
Documentation/SubmittingPatches:
"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 practise 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."
This patch adds a quick description at this rule under README.patches. This is
particularly important when merging mercurial tree with -git one.
Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>