netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next v2 3/4] mlxbf_gige: add BlueField-3 Serdes configuration

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Date:   Mon, 14 Nov 2022 16:56:47 -0800
From:   Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
To:     Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>
Cc:     Saeed Mahameed <saeed@...nel.org>,
        David Thompson <davthompson@...dia.com>, davem@...emloft.net,
        edumazet@...gle.com, pabeni@...hat.com, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        cai.huoqing@...ux.dev, brgl@...ev.pl, limings@...dia.com,
        chenhao288@...ilicon.com, huangguangbin2@...wei.com,
        Asmaa Mnebhi <asmaa@...dia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v2 3/4] mlxbf_gige: add BlueField-3 Serdes
 configuration

On Sat, 12 Nov 2022 16:53:28 +0100 Andrew Lunn wrote:
> Do you think anybody other than your company has the ability to change
> these values? Is there useful documentation about what they do, even
> if it is under NDA? Why would somebody actually need to change them?
> 
> Is here functionally here which you don't support but the community
> might like to add?
> 
> Expressing the data in a developer friendly C structure only really
> make sense if there is a small collection of developers out there who
> have the skills, documentation and maybe equipment to actually make
> meaningful changes.

+1, even if the tables are not "FW as in compiled code" it's still 
"FW as in opaque blob". Plus if the format is well known and documented
modifying the files is not harder than changing the kernel.

I think the applicability would be much wider. I will definitely make
the WiFi people use this mechanism:

  drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtw89/rtw8852a_table.c

ugh.

> I don't like making it harder to some clever people to hack new stuff
> into your drivers, but there are so few contributions from the
> community to your drivers that it might as well be black magic, and
> just load the values from a file.