[PATCH][RFC] request_firmware examples and MODULE_FIRMWARE

[Victor Hugo]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to become the firmware loader maintainer  
(request_firmware) and I felt the first thing I should do is update  
the incomplete example driver under Documentaion/firmware_class/.   
The example (firmware_sample_driver.c) doesn't work out of box and  
needs tweaking just to get it to compile.  I've added two files which  
use request_firmware and the asynchronous request_firmware_nowait.

The next step would be to update the documentation to make hotplug/ 
udev functionality a little more clear.  Hopefully I can get this in  
the next couple of days.

Also, I'd like to comment on Jon Masters push to include the  
MODULE_FIRMWARE api addition.  I strongly believe that policy should  
not be included in driver code, in this case it's in the form of a  
filename.

The firmware loader currently needs a filename passed to it so it can  
then pass the $FIRMWARE environment variable to the hotplug script.   
This is ok if you provide a generic filename like "firmware.bin" and  
then let the hotplug script worry about version numbers, i.e.  
"firmware-x.y.z.bin"

MODULE_FIRMWARE should be used to provide the generic filenames and  
which order the files should be loaded (request_firmware can be  
called various times), but I think its bad to have to change the  
driver everytime a new firmware version is released.

That said, here's the patch...

Attachment: firmware_examples.patch
Description: Binary data