Re: [GIT *] Allow request_firmware() to be satisfied from in-kernel, use it in more drivers.

Linus Torvalds
2008-07-15T19:27:57Z

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
>
> using /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/ is actually not a bad idea. You only
> have to fix udev to actually include this in the list of directories to
> look for firmware files. Also Ubuntu is already doing this.

I really don't think we need to even "fix udev".

Why don't we just load it ourselves? Esepcially as there are probably
places that try to avoid udev entirely, or at least use a very
cut-down-version.

We should be fairly trivially able to be _entirely_ backwards compatible
with any sane setup (not the _sane_ part! It implies that people don't
copy individual modules around by hand!), with no actual breakage or need
for distros to even update anything at all - just make the kernel able to
look up binary blobs in the same place it installed them.

That sounds like the RightThing(tm) to do _regardless_ of any other
issues, doesn't it? If the kernel installs it in some known place, why
should it not just read them from that known place?

Linus