Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/2] firmware version management: add firmware_version()

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>]

Hi Arjan,

> > It would be good if a driver knows which firmware version will be 
> > written to the hardware. I'm talking about external firmware files 
> > claimed by request_firmware(). 
> > 
> > We know so many different firmware files for bcm43xx and it becomes 
> > more and more complicated without some firmware version management.
> > 
> > This patch can create the md5sum of a firmware file. Then it looks into 
> > a table to figure out which version number is assigned to the hashcode.
> > That table is placed in the driver code and an example for bcm43xx comes 
> > in my next mail. Any comments?
> 
> why does this have to happen on the kernel side? Isn't it a lot easier
> and better to let the userspace side of things do this work, and even
> have a userspace file with the md5->version mapping? Or are there some
> practical considerations that make that hard to impossible?

I fully agree that we shouldn't put firmware versioning into the kernel
drivers. The pattern you give to request_firmware() can be mapped to any
file on the file system. And you also have the link to the device object
and I prefer you export a sysfs file for the version so that the helper
application loading the firmware can pick the right file.

Regards

Marcel