Re: [PATCH 2/3] firmware: Add CONFIG_BUILTIN_FIRMWARE option

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 25, 2008, Marcel Holtmann <marcel@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> in the early days we had something like three drivers using the
> request_firmware() and it was understood between the authors what the
> filename was meant for.

You're contradicting yourself.  Is it a filename, or is it not?
Earlier, you said it wasn't, it was just a name that userspace was
supposed to map to a filename.  Now, you're saying it is a filename.

Clearly (to me) your wish to prohibit '/'s in the firmware name has to
do with an attempt to force a distiction, to make the firmware a
filename rather than a pathname.  But, as you said yourself, the
mapping from firmware name is supposed to be entirely handled in
userland, therefore it doesn't even begin to make sense to distinguish
between filenames and pathnames.  You'd have to make assumptions that
(i) the firmware name names files (with built-in firmware, it
doesn't), and, if it is about filenames, (ii) what the pathname
separator character is.  Should '\\' be ruled out as well, because
someone might want /lib/firmware to be in a FAT filesystem?

nWouldn't it be better to leave the resolution of firmware names to
content *entirely* up to userland?  Say, if userland wants to
implement something very similar to the key-to-data map in-kernel
built-in firmware, this would work just fine, without any artificial
constraints?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ÂSÃ Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
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