From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758525AbYEYSui (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 May 2008 14:50:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756800AbYEYSua (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 May 2008 14:50:30 -0400 Received: from vs166246.vserver.de ([62.75.166.246]:35726 "EHLO vs166246.vserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756229AbYEYSua (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 May 2008 14:50:30 -0400 From: Michael Buesch To: Alexandre Oliva Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] firmware: Add CONFIG_BUILTIN_FIRMWARE option Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 20:49:39 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 (enterprise 0.20070907.709405) Cc: Marcel Holtmann , Johannes Berg , David Woodhouse , Sam Ravnborg , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, Abhay Salunke , kay.sievers@vrfy.org, Takashi Iwai References: <1211550282.28967.8.camel@pmac.infradead.org> <95BCF0F0-755A-4501-9B44-B421AD3E8F42@holtmann.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200805252049.39731.mb@bu3sch.de> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sunday 25 May 2008 19:17:57 Alexandre Oliva wrote: > On May 25, 2008, Marcel Holtmann wrote: > > > in the early days we had something like three drivers using the > > request_firmware() and it was understood between the authors what the > > filename was meant for. > > You're contradicting yourself. Is it a filename, or is it not? > Earlier, you said it wasn't, it was just a name that userspace was > supposed to map to a filename. Now, you're saying it is a filename. > > Clearly (to me) your wish to prohibit '/'s in the firmware name has to > do with an attempt to force a distiction, to make the firmware a > filename rather than a pathname. But, as you said yourself, the > mapping from firmware name is supposed to be entirely handled in > userland, therefore it doesn't even begin to make sense to distinguish > between filenames and pathnames. You'd have to make assumptions that > (i) the firmware name names files (with built-in firmware, it > doesn't), and, if it is about filenames, (ii) what the pathname > separator character is. Should '\\' be ruled out as well, because > someone might want /lib/firmware to be in a FAT filesystem? > > nWouldn't it be better to leave the resolution of firmware names to > content *entirely* up to userland? Say, if userland wants to > implement something very similar to the key-to-data map in-kernel > built-in firmware, this would work just fine, without any artificial > constraints? One additional thing is to make sure the usability of the whole stuff is not reduded. Currently I can do: modprobe b43 fwpostfix=-open # work with opensource firmware in b43-open/ rmmod b43 modprobe b43 # work with standard firmware in b43/ So it is really simple to switch between different flavours of firmware. It is _not_ acceptable to change an udev configuration file all the time, if you want to use another firmware. One needs to frequently switch between firmware versions when developing firmware code. -- Greetings Michael.