From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Takashi Iwai Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/5] asihpi: Remove HPI4000 Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:10:24 +0100 Message-ID: References: <200803061449.18512.linux@audioscience.com> <200803071232.52272.linux@audioscience.com> <47D9928A.30000@audioscience.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by SEMI 1.14.6 - "Maruoka") Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mx1.suse.de (cantor.suse.de [195.135.220.2]) by alsa0.perex.cz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A07D2453F for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:10:25 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <47D9928A.30000@audioscience.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org Errors-To: alsa-devel-bounces@alsa-project.org To: Eliot Blennerhassett Cc: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org List-Id: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org At Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:46:02 +1300, Eliot Blennerhassett wrote: > > > OK. BTW, what if the newer firmware is loaded onto the old driver? > > Within limits (how far apart driver and firmware are) this will work. > Mostly we are adding functions to the firmware, so old driver will work > with new firmware but a new driver won't work with old firmware. > Sometimes old functions are deprecated, but we don't remove them > straight away. As long as the backward-compatibility is kept, I think it's fine to use the same name. What I'm concerned is rather the regression by the firmware package update. So, I suppose the driver won't crash even if you have only the old firmware? > In the windows world our "driver" install includes driver, firmware, > userspace dll, python bindings, and mixer application all matching. Not that on Linux, obviously :) Of course, distros should provide the consistent packages, though. > > Would it be safer to rename the firmware file for each incompatible > > version? If yes, we can change the asihpi driver code together with > > the firmware renames to couple tightly. > > The firmware images contain the HPI version encoded in the header. I > will at least log a warning that the driver and firmware version do not > match. That'll be good. > I guess its possible to use versioned file names. Did you have something > in mind? Currently the filename is generated from an adapter ID: > > sprintf(fw_name, "asihpi/dsp%04x.bin", nAdapter); Well, you can simply add a version number suffix to the firmware name, such as, dspxxx-032011.bin. But, I think this versioned name is needed only if the firmware has compatibility issue. As long as the firmware has a certain level of compatibility, we can reuse the same name. thanks, Takashi