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

David Woodhouse
2008-07-15T05:30:45Z

On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 15:15 +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for proving something I tried to establish for weeks
> > but which Alan Cox, David W., and others vehemently denied.
> >
> > They states that it was being done on a technical basis rather
> > than being predominantly a legal one.
>
> Despite the risk of going against the current here, I do like David
> patches for one major reason: I love my kernels with everything
> built-in, that's how I can netboot them etc... without having to bother
> with installing modules.

I think you're definitely _with_ the current on that one.

> David's patches allow me to do that with drivers that would have
> -required- disk based firmwares beforehand. It allows things like
> rooting off a block device that needs a firmware without an initrd,
> etc....
>
> As long as the firmwares are shipped with the kernel tree, I'm happpy,

They don't even need to be shipped with the kernel tree. You can set
CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR to point to wherever you keep them
(like /lib/firmware) and it'll pull them in from there. That's _why_
it's useful for drivers which would have required an initrd before, and
which don't have their firmware shipped in the kernel tree.

--
dwmw2