Not the most elegent solution but I'm wondering if keeping a copy
of the driver as is around and using new locations for the fixed
firmware might be the safest way to handle this. We could have a
wrapper which tries to load the newer firmware and uses the fixed
driver code if that's there, otherwise tries the old driver with
the existing firmware paths. This is obviously a horror show and
leaves the old code sitting there but given the mistakes that
have been made the whole situation looks like a house of cards.
Thanks for the feedback Mark. While I'm not yet on the "SOF will
fix this" train, I'm keen to agree to leaving this entirely to
SOF if it comes down to us duplicating /skylake.
However, we are not going to give up that easily. I'll see if
some "golden config" hardcodes can't be provided in some legacy.c
file which would be fetched if initial setup fails. E.g.: 2cores,
3ssps, 1PAGE_SIZE per trace buffer.. and such. There are quite a
few factors to take into consideration though. If "asking" user
via dmesg to upgrade the firmware if his/her setup contains
obsolete binary is really not an option, then some magic words
got to be involved.
Czarek
On the second thought what if instead of duplicating kernel code,
binaries would be duplicated?
I.e. rather than targeting /intel/dsp_fw_cnl.bin, _new_ /skylake
would be expecting /intel/dsp_fw_cnl_release.bin? Same with
topology binaries.
In such case, we "only" need to figure out how to propagate new
files to Linux distos so whenever someone updates their kernel,
new binaries are already present in their /lib/firmware.
If such option is valid, we can postpone /skylake upgrade till 5.4
merging window closes and the patches (rough estimation is 150)
would descend upon alsa-devel in time between 5.4 and 5.5.
If the driver and FW update will be within the same kernel release
then IMHO
there should be no compatibility problem between those two
components, right?
This way kernel users willing to stick to old FW can stay on older
kernel version while
others can update and receive all the latest FW functionality that
was developed and enabled.
I am not comfortable with precluding a kernel update because of a
single firmware file. There are all sort of reasons for updating a
kernel, security, sideband attacks and Android CDD compatibility
being the most obvious ones.
The single firmware file will not be a blocker as the driver included in
updated kernel will support it.
All you have to do is the little effort to re-generate your custom
topology for the new firmware target.
The entire operation should not be a problem as there are dedicated
utilities like FDK to do that.
The issue is the same whether it's a topology file or a firmware file.
The ideal situation is that when the kernel is updated it handles both
in backwards compatible ways.
If to deal with a new firmware file you have to regenerate a new
topology, you are in a different model altogether.
Your statement Pierre suggest that everyone should avoid any functional
changes in kernel
that are not critical because that would be problematic for others who
switch from older kernel version.
All I said was that you cannot assume that people who are using an old
firmware/driver will remain on an old kernel.
Mark made an initial proposal to essentially freeze the current
solution, which would make it possible to update the kernel but keep the
same skylake driver in legacy/maintenance mode only, and an 'new' option
that would rely on an updated distribution of firmware/driver. I did not
get the counter proposal from Cezary at all.
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