[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] kernel 2.6.34-1

[Evangelos Foutras]

On 18/05/10 17:28, Thomas Bächler wrote:
> Am 18.05.2010 16:06, schrieb Evangelos Foutras:
>> In particular, notice Alex's reply stating:
>>
>> --8<--------------------------------------------------------------------
>> In general, microcode is slowly being moved out of the kernel and into
>> the Linux firmware tree:
>> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=tree
>> Eventually all of the radeon microcode will end up out up in that tree.
>> --8<--------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I'm not sure what this means for our kernel26-firmware package, but I
>> believe we would want to ship the files included in the "Linux firmware
>> tree".
>
> No, we don't. We want to and will ship all the firmware files that are
> included in the current Linux release (make install_firmware).
>
> If the developers are not capable of ensuring that the driver and
> firmware versions in the Linux releases work together, that is a bug on
> their end. In this case, it seems they move code out of the radeon
> driver more quickly than into the firmware files - I am not willing to
> fix this screwup for them.

I see your point. It seems that upstream kernel developers don't wish to 
ship firmware files, which is... not ideal for downstream (e.g. Arch).

However, these firmware files are needed for R600/R700/Evergreen cards 
[1], therefore I see two options:

1) radeon_ucode [2] can be brought to [extra] and an announcement added 
to the front page informing users about this. (The package should also 
be renamed to radeon-ucode in order for it to be consistent with the 
rest of the firmware packages.)

2) Alternately, the radeon firmware files could be included in the 
kernel26-firmware package.

I like the first option better because it keeps things separate.

----
[1] 
http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeonBuildHowTo#TroubleshootingExtraFirmwareforR600.2BAC8-R700.2BAC8-Evergreen
[2] http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=33016