On Tue, 2016-11-29 at 22:37 +0100, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 10:10:56PM +0100, Tom Gundersen wrote:

quoted

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Johannes Berg
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

My argument basically goes like this:

First, given good drivers (i.e. using request_firmware_nowait())
putting firmware even for a built-in driver into initramfs or not
should be a system integrator decision. If they don't need the
device
that early, it should be possible for them to delay it. Or,
perhaps, if
the firmware is too big, etc. I'm sure we can all come up with
more
examples of why you'd want to do it one way or another.

This is how I understood the the situation, but I never quite
bought
it. What is wrong with the kernel saying "you must put your module
and
your firmware together"? Sure, people may want to do things
differently, but what is the real blocker?

0) Firmware upgrades are possible
1) Some firmware is optional
2) Firmware licenses may often not be GPLv2 compatible
3) Some firmwares may be stupid large (remote-proc) as such
   neither built-in firmware nor using the firmware in initramfs
   is reasonable.

4) "firmware" may be on a separate flash partition because it's really
   calibration data required by the (wifi) chip/driver
   (to allow kernel updates without having to taylor the kernel image
   to each and every device!!

johannes