linux-kernel - Re: [RFC v2 3/7] firmware: port built-in section to linker table

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Date:	Tue, 01 Mar 2016 08:10:24 -0800
From:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...nel.org>, hpa@...or.com,
	tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...hat.com, bp@...en8.de
Cc:	x86@...nel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, luto@...capital.net,
	boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com, rusty@...tcorp.com.au,
	david.vrabel@...rix.com, konrad.wilk@...cle.com, mcb30@...e.org,
	jgross@...e.com, ming.lei@...onical.com,
	gregkh@...uxfoundation.org, arnd@...db.de,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, linux@....linux.org.uk,
	benh@...nel.crashing.org, jbaron@...mai.com, ananth@...ibm.com,
	anil.s.keshavamurthy@...el.com, davem@...emloft.net,
	masami.hiramatsu.pt@...achi.com, andriy.shevchenko@...ux.intel.com,
	xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com
Subject: Re: [RFC v2 3/7] firmware: port built-in section to linker table

On Mon, 2016-02-29 at 10:12 +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-02-19 at 05:45 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > This ports built-in firmware to use linker tables,
> > this replaces the custom section solution with a
> > generic solution.
> > 
> > This also demos the use of the .rodata (SECTION_RO)
> > linker tables.
> > 
> > Tested with 0 built-in firmware, 1 and 2 built-in
> > firmwares successfully.
> 
> I think we'd do better to rip this support out entirely. It just 
> isn't needed; firmware can live in an initramfs and don't even need 
> *any* actual running userspace support to load it from there these 
> days, do we?

We have lots of SCSI drivers with built in firmware.  The obvious
examples are 53c700, aic7xxx and aic79xx.  For them, we actually have
the firmware compilers in tree.  The firmware model they use just isn't
amenable to the firmware loader: they're not monolithic blobs, it's a
set of firmware scripts we use to handle particular operations before
giving control back to the host, so the firmware and the driver are
very much symbiotic.

On the other hand, I don't think any of them uses firmware sections, so
it's not an argument for not ripping out this type.

James

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