Re: [PATCH] checkpatch.pl: Don't complain about nominal authors if there isn't one

[Alan Stern]

On Thu, 12 Sep 2019, Joe Perches wrote:

> On Thu, 2019-09-12 at 16:55 -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> > checkpatch.pl shouldn't warn about a "Missing Signed-off-by: line by
> > nominal patch author" if there is no nominal patch author.  Without
> > this change, checkpatch always gives me the following warning:
> > 
> >         WARNING: Missing Signed-off-by: line by nominal patch author ''
> 
> When/how does this occur?  Example please.

The patch itself is a good example.  Attached to this email is the
patch file in the form I keep it (from quilt, not git; note that quilt
doesn't do a good job of handling the "---" line so I leave it out and
insert it when submitting the patch).  Try saving the attachment and
running it through checkpatch.pl.  Here's what I get:


$ scripts/checkpatch.pl /tmp/checkpatch-author-fix.patch 
WARNING: Missing Signed-off-by: line by nominal patch author ''

total: 0 errors, 1 warnings, 8 lines checked

NOTE: For some of the reported defects, checkpatch may be able to
      mechanically convert to the typical style using --fix or --fix-inplace.

/tmp/checkpatch-author-fix.patch has style problems, please review.

NOTE: If any of the errors are false positives, please report
      them to the maintainer, see CHECKPATCH in MAINTAINERS.


Would you like me to resubmit the patch with this example added to the
patch description?

Alan Stern
checkpatch.pl shouldn't warn about a "Missing Signed-off-by: line by
nominal patch author" if there is no nominal patch author.  Without
this change, checkpatch always gives me the following warning:

	WARNING: Missing Signed-off-by: line by nominal patch author ''

Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <stern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



 scripts/checkpatch.pl |    2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Index: usb-devel/scripts/checkpatch.pl
===================================================================
--- usb-devel.orig/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ usb-devel/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -6673,7 +6673,7 @@ sub process {
 		if ($signoff == 0) {
 			ERROR("MISSING_SIGN_OFF",
 			      "Missing Signed-off-by: line(s)\n");
-		} elsif (!$authorsignoff) {
+		} elsif ($author ne '' && !$authorsignoff) {
 			WARN("NO_AUTHOR_SIGN_OFF",
 			     "Missing Signed-off-by: line by nominal patch author '$author'\n");
 		}