Re: [PATCH] media: venus: declare firmware files via MODULE_FIRMWARE

[Bryan O'Donoghue <bod@kernel.org>]

On 20/04/2026 20:57, Christopher Obbard wrote:
> Hi Bryan,
> 
> The background for this was to ensure the firmware is available in a
> system image
> or copied into the initrd if the driver is built-in. This is done in a
> CI environment without
> access to the hardware.
> 
> Debian's initramfs-tools looks at MODULE_FIRWMARE and copies those
> files into the
> initrd if the driver is built-in. For now, a workaround for me could
> be to just manually copy
> the firmware into the initrd and drop this patch.
> 
> I didn't get to the bottom of modifying the firmware loading code to
> make the driver
> defer probe to when the rootfs was ready and instead just threw the
> firmware into
> the initrd, but that's another story.
> 
> On Mon, 20 Apr 2026 at 11:20, Bryan O'Donoghue <bod@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 19/04/2026 23:39, Christopher Obbard wrote:
>>> The driver loads firmware blobs at runtime via request_firmware()
>>> but does not currently advertise the possible filenames. Add
>>> MODULE_FIRMWARE() entries for all known firmware variants so they are
>>> visible via modinfo and can be picked up by user space tooling.
>>
>> What about the board dtsi files ?
> 
> I really am not keen on adding all of the firmware from the board dts files as
> MODULE_FIRMWARE entries into the driver, it then becomes two lists to
> maintain. What do you think?
> 
> BUT talking of two lists to maintain, I am essentially duplicating fwname in
> MODULE_FIRMWARE, so perhaps my argument is moot.
> 
> For my use-case, it may make sense to "teach" the initrd generator to look at
> the firmware-name entries from the dts files I am building for. But that is also
> not ideal.
> 
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Chris

I think its reasonable to keep a list of firmware that is supplied in 
linux-firmware in the MODULE_FIRMWARE() list.

AFAIK paths such as "qcom/sdm845/SHIFT/axolotl/venus.mbn"; are not in 
linux-firmware so .. we shoudln't expect tooling to populate them into 
initrd.

Reviewed-by: Bryan O'Donoghue <bod@kernel.org>

---
bod