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

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Message-ID: <20160301175453.GE25240@wotan.suse.de>
Date:	Tue, 1 Mar 2016 18:54:53 +0100
From:	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...nel.org>
To:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
Cc:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...nel.org>, hpa@...or.com,
	tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...hat.com, bp@...en8.de, 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 Tue, Mar 01, 2016 at 08:10:24AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> 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.

I'm in the process of doing some other cleanups with the firmware_class
stuff so that odd requirements get supported but clean interfaces are
also not hampered by these odd requirements, so I'll take a look at
this later. If you have other oddball firmware requirements please
let me know so I can also keep in mind.

> 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.

Thanks for confirming. I'll rip this out.

  Luis