From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759460AbYE2VGW (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:06:22 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751526AbYE2VGM (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:06:12 -0400 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:39325 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751341AbYE2VGL (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:06:11 -0400 Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 14:03:04 -0700 From: Greg KH To: Yinghai Lu Cc: Matthew Wilcox , Arjan van de Ven , James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com, ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, David Woodhouse , David Miller , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel. Message-ID: <20080529210304.GA8866@kroah.com> References: <1211995212.3445.52.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080528.225826.40264516.davem@davemloft.net> <1212041839.8888.38.camel@pasglop> <20080529124548.GC8065@mit.edu> <1212077700.26088.83.camel@shinybook.infradead.org> <20080529164745.GA21763@kroah.com> <483F1232.4010003@linux.intel.com> <20080529204736.GZ22636@parisc-linux.org> <86802c440805291355p5697c775k5f0beb8163688058@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <86802c440805291355p5697c775k5f0beb8163688058@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:55:16PM -0700, Yinghai Lu wrote: > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:29:38PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > >> I very much would like to see a kernel-firmware or something tarbal that contains > >> a copy of all relevant "freely distributable" firmware, that users can just install > >> independent of the actual kernel version (and that kbuild would just pick up somehow). > >> That way we can deal with a lot more firmware without having to pollute the kernel / kernel release process > >> (after all, the timing is different in terms of releasing) while making it easy > >> to get the lot of it. > > > > There's definitely two schools of thought on this. Sometimes firmware > > changes (or adds) an interface. If the kernel driver has to accommodate > > new and old firmware, that adds complexity, and we all know that added > > complexity means more bugs. So I can definitely see some vendors > > wanting to distribute their firmware with the kernel. > > > driver should check fw version... Not all firmware has the ability to check the version :( So while Arjan's goal would be nice, Matthew is right, this can't happen for all types of firmware. thanks, greg k-h