[ewg] shipping firmware with ofed

[Steve Wise]

Woodruff, Robert J wrote:
> If this is the case, then why not just build the firmware into the driver
> and submit it with the driver when the driver is sent upstream to kernel.org. 
>
> I have seen firmware imbedded into source code before, in the form of
> a header file that contains the firmware code in hex. Something like,
>
> unsigned long firmware[] =  {
>          0xfefefefe,
>          0xdededede,
>              .
>              .
>              .
> }
>
>   

I don't think thats the recommended approach in the upstream kernel.  
The kernel supports an infrastructure where the driver can request a 
firmware file to be opened and passed into the driver at device probe 
time.  So I think the recommended approach is to have distros ship the 
firmware in /lib/firmware/*, and then have the driver request the 
firmware if it needs to download and run a new version using these 
standard Linux kernel services.  This is how RHEL5.3 handles cxgb3 
today.  They ship the binary image.  The driver loads it at device probe 
time.

The Linux kernel service is request_firmware().


Steve.