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

Adrian Bunk
2008-07-15T22:19:55Z

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 09:44:45PM +0200, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Linus,
>
> > > Personally I am against hacking file loading from within the kernel.
> > > This is why we involved udev (or hotplug in the beginning). It allows
> > > you to have userspace policy for the search paths etc.
> >
> > Well, I'm personally against _forcing_ people to use udev.
> >
> > Yes, desktop distros generally will do so, since there are lots of complex
> > issues etc. But I don't think we've generally forced it on people if they
> > don't want it (ie I haven't tried it personally since the distro I used
> > started using udev, but I think you can still just ignore udev events and
> > set everything up statically).
> >
> > And I don't think that's wrong. Which implies that setup things should
> > still generally at least allow us to avoid udev.
> >
> > (But maybe I'm wrong, and everybody already uses udev just because they
> > couldn't be bothered not to).
>
> I actually think that is the case here. udev is so lightweight and
> really slim nowadays that not using it is a big drawback. There might be
> some system out there that are still using a static /dev directory, but
> for sure there are not many and even the embedded world doesn't really
> mind.
>...

Depends on which embedded systems you look at.

For MID devices that's definitely true, but there are also today still
cases where customers want fast startup times on < 200 MHz embedded
devices, and when every second counts you don't want to add a
"Waiting for /dev to be fully populated" from udev to the bootup.

(And on my computer (whose Linux installation predates the inclusion of
devfsd (sic) into the kernel) the static /dev also still works fine.)

> Regards
>
> Marcel

cu
Adrian

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