Some thoughts about firmware inclusion.

Jeremy Katz katzj at redhat.com
Mon Oct 22 14:38:07 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 10:06 -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
> On a tangent, I would like to have a discussion about in-kernel firmware
> as it becomes split out and loaded using request_firmware. So that third
> parties can supply different firmware updates, can we agree that it's
> worthwhile having one firmware package for each firmware file set needed
> by the kernel package, in the longer term?

This is fine (well, not for F8 obviously, but we can make it okay for
F9), with a few caveats:
1) The module *MUST* have the needed firmware tagged appropriately so
that we can figure out what firmware to pull into initrds, the
installer, etc
2) We should probably follow the path being blazed with wireless
firmware where we include the multiple, incompatible firmware versions
in one package.  Otherwise, the fact that multiple kernels can be
installed leads to a a bit of a quagmire
3) Care needs to be taken so that upgrades will work correctly once the
firmware has moved.  A requires is one answer, and maybe the best, but
there definitely needs to be some thought

Jeremy




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