Re: [PATCH v2 4/5] firmware: add SmPL report for custom fallback mechanism

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 03:02:22PM +0100, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 09:32:26AM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 03:10:37AM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > > Even though most distributions today disable the fallback mechanism
> > > by default we've determined that we cannot remove them from the kernel.
> > > This is not well understood so document the reason and logic behind that.
> > 
> > Well, the biggest reason is that some distros still rely on this.  I've
> > seen new products being made that rely on it,
> 
> Let's be a bit more precise: upstream there are only two driver relying on this
> and I've learned about the non-upstream uses which folks have been calling for
> ensuring this functionality is kept for: a) non-upstream mobile 802.11 drivers or
> upstream 802.11 drivers with slight out-of-tree customizations with a requirements to
> get calibration data using custom mechanisms b) remote-proc users with huge firmware
> requirements for which initramfs is not well suited for.

That b) is a lot of devices, I know of a few million phones in the wild
right now that rely on it.  And millions is a pretty big number :)

Anyway, thanks for addressing my concerns, I'm guessing you will respin
these remaining patches and resend them as I think there were still some
comments on them?  I took the first 3 here.

Is the "drvdata" code ready in your opinion to be merged / reviewed yet?

thanks,

greg k-h