From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758894AbYE2Uzd (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 16:55:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753596AbYE2UzX (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 16:55:23 -0400 Received: from rv-out-0506.google.com ([209.85.198.230]:53378 "EHLO rv-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753185AbYE2UzW (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 16:55:22 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=jtjf2YJ7di3k28h3iowzAhBoIEQvO8gMZXbGQJCEwZHYr61XePoPk2TijKg/7iPERhTQWdAI/DVFWJ26nhtF9OLCGtTbgu514w8Upi9mbJG+xiXWvNbDOFny6hT77awo96i28KZfOEft0yXWaMMPYqV8OCd4WdUhbHZG8z8JPDE= Message-ID: <86802c440805291355p5697c775k5f0beb8163688058@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:55:16 -0700 From: "Yinghai Lu" To: "Matthew Wilcox" Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel. Cc: "Arjan van de Ven" , "Greg KH" , James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com, ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, "David Woodhouse" , "David Miller" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <20080529204736.GZ22636@parisc-linux.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <1211995212.3445.52.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080528.225826.40264516.davem@davemloft.net> <1212041839.8888.38.camel@pasglop> <20080529124548.GC8065@mit.edu> <1212077700.26088.83.camel@shinybook.infradead.org> <20080529164745.GA21763@kroah.com> <483F1232.4010003@linux.intel.com> <20080529204736.GZ22636@parisc-linux.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:29:38PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote: >> I very much would like to see a kernel-firmware or something tarbal that contains >> a copy of all relevant "freely distributable" firmware, that users can just install >> independent of the actual kernel version (and that kbuild would just pick up somehow). >> That way we can deal with a lot more firmware without having to pollute the kernel / kernel release process >> (after all, the timing is different in terms of releasing) while making it easy >> to get the lot of it. > > There's definitely two schools of thought on this. Sometimes firmware > changes (or adds) an interface. If the kernel driver has to accommodate > new and old firmware, that adds complexity, and we all know that added > complexity means more bugs. So I can definitely see some vendors > wanting to distribute their firmware with the kernel. > driver should check fw version... YH