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

David Woodhouse
2008-07-15T18:31:17Z

On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 11:25 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >
> > Which is why 'make modules_install' installs the firmware, or at least it did
> > before David W pushed upstream.
>
> So you're literally just about making this be "make modules_install"
> rather than "make firmware_install"
>
> Ok. Are you going to be happy if "make modules_install" just copies the
> firmware files of the affected modules too?

I did that already. I'm not _entirely_ sure it was the right thing to
do, but it does help to reduce surprises when people don't realise that
a driver they're using now has separate firmware.

I don't believe it was the result of a constructive request from Jeff; I
think someone else suggested it in response to his whining. It may even
have been my idea, but I don't recall.

This is the current situation:

'make modules_install' will install the firmware required by the modules
it installs. It'll install that to $(INSTALL_MOD_PATH)/lib/firmware/
unless you override that by setting $(INSTALL_FW_PATH). So you can put
it into a kernel-specific directory if you want to.

'make firmware_install' will install _all_ available firmware files
to /lib/firmware (or $(INSTALL_FW_PATH)), regardless of architecture or
configuration. That's what Fedora is using for its 'kernel-firmware'
package, which is arch-independent and required by the various kernel
binary packages.

--
dwmw2