Re: [PATCH 00/18] firmware: moving drivers to request_firmware()

[Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>]

David Woodhouse wrote:
> Ignoring the set of 'make fw->data const' patches which have mostly
> been already posted and are fairly trivial, this is the current content
> of the firmware tree at git.infradead.org/users/dwmw2/firmware-2.6.git
> 
> It starts by giving a way to build arbitrary firmware blobs into the
> kernel while letting request_firmware() find them there, and then sets
> about converting drivers to use request_firmware() instead of static
> data blobs, now that we can do that without forcing the users to
> actually  satisfy the firmware requests from userspace.
> 
> Rather than including binary blobs in the git tree, we carry them as
> .ihex files -- which as an added bonus can have comments and licensing
> information appended after the EOF record.
> 
> For the USB drivers which actually _want_ Intel HEX files in their
> original form as individual records, we have a binary representation
> of such and a tool to convert the original .HEX files into .fw files
> in that form. And associated helpers in the kernel for validating and
> using them. 
> 
> We also add a 'make firmware_install' target, which is intended to
> install the firmware blobs into /lib/firmware/ where the userspace
> loader to find them.

Why do we need the .ihex format?

We should be loading firmwares exactly as they come from the vendor, 
without any wrappers.

	Jeff