Josselin Mouette wrote:
Finally, you shouldn't forget that, technically speaking, using hotplug
for uploading the firmware is much more flexible and elegant than
including it in the kernel. Upgrading the firmware and the module should
be two independent operations. People who are advocating the current
situation are refusing technical improvements just because they are
brought by people they find convenient to call "zealots".
This is highly amusing, coming from someone who does not maintain a
driver with a firmware.
The current firmware infrastructure is too primitive. Compiling the
firmware into the driver is much easier on the driver maintainers and
users, presently.
Repeating myself,
* Most firmwares are a -collection- of images and data. The firmware
infrastructure should load an -archive- of firmwares and associated data
values.
* The firmware distribution infrastructure is basically non-existent.
There is no standard way to make sure that a firmware separated from the
driver gets to all users.
* The firmware bundling infrastructure is basically non-existent.
(Arjan talked about this) There needs to be a a way to ensure that the
needed firmwares are automatically added to initramfs/initrd.
* There is no chicken-and-egg problem as Arjan mentions. Once the above
technical problems are resolved, its trivial to apply a firmware loading
patch. I believe in hard transitions, not shipping tg3 with firmware
-and- a firmware loading patch.
* Firmwares such as tg3 should be shipped with the kernel tarball.
In short, there are plenty of technical problems to resolve before this
is even a reasonable request. Currently, a user upgrading to a tg3 sans
firmware will simply get tg3 sans firmware.
Jeff
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