Re: request_firmware() hotplug interface.

[Manuel Estrada Sainz <ranty@debian.org>]

 Hi Greg,

 Sorry, for the delay, I wanted to answer already with some code, but I
 am too outdated on 2.5 development :(, so it will take a while.

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 01:19:43PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 09:47:02PM +0200, Manuel Estrada Sainz wrote:
> > 
> >  - Why I don't think any more that sysfs is good as "the default" for
> >    userspace to provide the firmware:
> > 	- For drivers providing a sysfs entry for firmware:
> > 		It will be trivial to use request_firmware() and arrange the
> > 		hotplug scripts to get it copied to their sysfs firmware
> > 		entry. They don't need any additional support for copying the
> > 		firmware from userspace.
> 
> With the code in the latest -bk tree, if you simply create a struct
> class and name it "firmware", and then just create a struct class_device
> for any struct device that wants firmware to be loaded, you will get a
> hotplug event generated for you (with the name "firmware")
> automatically.  That is a lot simpler than the firmware.c code you
> posted.

 Sounds promising, I'll try to code something on top of that.

> > 	- For drivers not providing a sysfs entry for firmware:
> > 		They just want the appropriate firmware in a memory buffer. It
> > 		doesn't make much sense to hack some code to get a sysfs entry
> > 		for them and then tell hotplug where to copy the firmware.
> > 		The driver won't know that the entry is there, and it won't
> > 		make sense to write data to it unless requested via hotplug.
> 
> As all devices in the kernel should now be in sysfs (if not, please let
> me know what busses haven't been converted yet),

 As said, I am outdated on 2.5 development, if I find any while I look at
 it, I promise to complain.

> I think the firmware class is a much simpler way to go.  You get the
> hotplug call for free, and a sysfs entry where the firmware can be
> dumped to, if you want to do it that way.

 Sounds good.

 Thanks

 	Manuel

 PS: Not much new, mainly proving that I'm not ignoring you :), I'm
 working on it.

-- 
--- Manuel Estrada Sainz <ranty@debian.org>
                         <ranty@bigfoot.com>
			 <ranty@users.sourceforge.net>
------------------------ <manuel.estrada@hispalinux.es> -------------------
Let us have the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to
change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.