b43-fwcutter: add helper script for getting firmware

Rafał Miłecki
2014-08-01T17:41:57Z

Hey,

Installing a firmware was always kind of challenge for end users.
There were many tries of solving this:
1) Distribution wiki pages with descriptions
2) b43 wiki page trying to handle the most common distros
3) Extra non-free packages
4) Scripts like install_bcm43xx_firmware in openSUSE
5) Scripts like postinst in Debian
Way too many of them. Way too complex.

My idea is to add a helper script to the b43-tools / fwcutter and put
it during install in $(PREFIX)/bin/. This way we will know that every
user who installed b43-fwcutter also owns our script. Then we just
tell our users "hey, fire your b43_install_firmware" (or whatever).

Of course distros still we be able to make it automatic. For example
Debian's postinst could simply call this script and simplify its
postinst. Same for RPMs.

[The second part]

Now, if you like my idea above, there is one more thing worth
considering. Offline firmware installation. It's not that common, but
there still appear ppl who can't use Ethernet cable and don't have
another Linux machine to extract firmware using it. For them our
script would be useless.

So my another idea is to make our script accept passing path to the
driver as a command line argument. So one can download
broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2, put it on a USB flash and call
b43_install_firmware /mnt/usb/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2
We should also remember to allows passing other archives as an
argument (wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o at least!).

Do you like this idea? Could someone handle this?

--
Rafa?