Hi Pascal, On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 02:37:44PM +0000, Pascal Van Leeuwen wrote: > > From: Antoine Tenart <antoine.tenart@xxxxxxxxxxx> > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 07:56:24AM +0200, Pascal van Leeuwen wrote: > > > In addition to this, the direction the kernel has taken was to *remove* > > binary firmwares from its source code. I'm afraid adding this is a > > no-go. > > For a HW engineer, there really is no fundamental difference between > control register contents or an instruction word. They can both have > the exact same effects internal to the HW. > If I had disguised this as a handful of config reg writes writing > some #define'd magic values, probably no one would have even noticed. I do not fully agree. If this is comparable to configuring h/w registers, then you could probably have defines explaining why each bit is set and what it's doing. Which would be fine. > By that same definition, the tokens the driver generates for > processing could be considered "firmware" as well (as they are used by > the hardware in a very similar way) ... Right. The main difference here is we do have a clear definition of what the tokens are doing. Thanks to your explanation, if this firmware is really looking like the token we're using, the words have a defined structure and the magic values could be generated with proper defines and macros. And I think it's the main issue here: it's not acceptable to have an array of magic values. If you can give a meaning to those bits, I see no reason why it couldn't be added to the driver. (And I'm all for what you're trying to achieve here :)). > > The proper solution I believe would be to support loading this "MiniFW", > > which (depending on the license) could be either distributed in the > > rootfs and loaded (like what's done currently), or through > > CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE. > > > That seems total overkill for just a handful of words though. Given your explanation, I agree. (If those bits can have meaning). Thanks! Antoine -- Antoine Ténart, Bootlin Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering https://bootlin.com
