How to keep Reviewed-by lines in git commits with gerrit.

[Joseph Myers]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2019, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

>     - Gerrit does not close the review but adds a new patchset version
>       because the commit message changed.

I don't see this as a useful way for it to behave.

By including a Change-Id (that matches the Change-Id of something tracked 
in gerrit) in a commit pushed to master, the committer is making an 
assertion that what they are pushing is the latest version of the tracked 
change, and (by pushing) that it needs no further review.  On that basis, 
the review should automatically be closed, without needing to add any new 
patchset version.

This shouldn't just be about Reviewed-by.  If someone says a patch is OK 
with a specific change made to it (whether to the code or to the commit 
message), it should be enough to make that change and retest and push to 
master, without needing to go through extra administration in a review 
system just because of that change.

*Reducing* the amount of administration required is a good thing (for 
example, if we can develop a way for a commit message to say that the 
commit fixes a given bug, and for that to result in the bug being marked 
RESOLVED / FIXED with target milestone set automatically).  Increasing the 
amount of administration needed for a patch that's OK with changes doesn't 
seem a good idea to me; patch tracking systems should be reducing the work 
humans need to do rather than adding extra steps.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com