mainline aic94xx firmware woes

Muli Ben-Yehuda
2006-09-25T10:11:27Z

Hi,

The recently merged aic94xx in mainline requires external firmware
support. This, in turn, necessitates an initrd/initramfs environment
that includes firmware support to load the firmware. Will a patch to
optionally include the firmware inline in the kernel and thus not
having to use an initramfs be acceptable?

Also, aic94xx does not compile unless FW_LOADER is set in .config due
to missing 'request_firmware'. What's the right thing to do here -
aic94xx selecting it, depending on it, or FW_LOADER providing empty
request_firmware() in case it's compiled out (the last one violates
the principle of least surprise IMHO).

Cheers,
Muli