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Patches 6-8 add the "ethtool -f" and the boot-time firmware upgrade
on

the

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mlxsw spectrum driver.

When we tried using `ethtool -E' for qed we got burned for trying to
use

the magic

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value [1]. When we suggested extending it to allow some private data

indications,

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Ben claimed that this entire ethtool infrastructure is a thing of
the past, and we should try using MTD instead - a claim no one

bothered to counter.

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Creating proprietary file-formats, filling them with metadata and
complementary driver state-machines could easily overcome the
original obstacle we faced. But it raises the question of whether
these APIs are valid or obsolete.

The metadata in our format is needed to allow us to hold several
firmware images for several spectrum silicon variants in one file,
hence the metadata is used by the driver and does not get transferred to

the device.

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Understood; Otherwise it would have been 'data' and not 'metadata'.

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Our code can only be used to transfer firmware to the device, and
cannot be used to configure the device.

Not sure what this refers to? The differences between '-f' and '-E'?
Also, assuming you haven't started selling your adapters as persistent
memory for storage, what's the difference?

Sorry, I am not sure I understand. You think that drivers should not
implement ethtool's flash_device callback anymore? do you have an
alternative for firmware flash?

That's exactly the question Ben asked in - 
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=146514461214421&w=2
Suggesting to use MTD for flash access.

I'm not saying that approach was necessarily the best;
But no one shared any disagreement with it back then.