[oe] linux-firmware

[Paul Eggleton]

On Friday 07 September 2012 16:12:39 Sander van Grieken wrote:
> On 09/07/2012 03:44 PM, Henning Heinold wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 11:31:41AM +0200, Sander van Grieken wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> Currently, linux-firmware produces one big package with all binary
> >> firmware files installed. It would be benificial , especially for
> >> devices with a very small rootfs, to install only a subset of the entire
> >> collection. Some effort has been done to split off separate packages,
> >> but it's not clear what the preferred naming should be.
> >> 
> >> - Should it follow the kernel-module-* naming, e.g.
> >> kernel-module-ath9k-htc would need linux-firmware-ath9k-htc?
> >> - Or should it follow the firmware file naming, e.g.
> >> linux-firmware-htc-7010 - Or maybe have a bit larger packages and simply
> >> split by vendor, e.g. linux-firmware-atheros
> >> - How and if to package the license file
> >> 
> >> Thoughts?
> > 
> > Because we even split all kernel modules into seperate packages we should
> > do it for firmware files too. But that is a lot of monkey work, you need
> > to check for all firmware files and make the right packages.
> Yes, that's why I ask. It would be helpful if there's a comment in the
> bb explaining this is wanted, and how to name the package. Then devs
> working with certain hardware can define a specific package and test
> with their hardware locally. This way it can be incrementally done.
> 
> > The scheme of the package names seems fine to me.
> 
> What scheme?
> 
> rtl8192cu follows kernel module naming, firmware is rtl8192cufw, and
> includes license file
> rtl8192ce follows kernel module naming, doesn't include license file
> sd8686 follows firmware naming, includes license file
> wl12xx follows 'firmware' naming (actually is vendor scope), doesn't
> include license file

Ignore my other message - I was confused by some seemingly old code we have in 
kernel.bbclass, that is separate from the linux-firmware recipe.

We should always be including the license file if present I believe.

As for the package splitting I would advocate some kind of automated splitting 
using do_split_packages rather than manually packaging everything if we can 
avoid it. FYI I wrote something about the use of this here:

  https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Handling_optional_module_packaging

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre