[meta-intel] minnowboard: question about the inclusion of linux-firmware

[Darren Hart]

From:  Christopher Larson <kergoth at gmail.com>
Date:  Wednesday, May 28, 2014 at 8:47
To:  Darren Hart <dvhart at linux.intel.com>
Cc:  "nitin.a.kamble" <nitin.a.kamble at intel.com>,
<meta-intel at yoctoproject.org>
Subject:  Re: [meta-intel] minnowboard: question about the inclusion of
linux-firmware


>
>On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:40 AM, Darren Hart <dvhart at linux.intel.com>
>wrote:
>
>On 5/28/14, 8:34, "Kamble, Nitin A" <nitin.a.kamble at intel.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>On 5/28/2014 8:03 AM, Christopher Larson wrote:
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> I'd thought I'd already sent this, but apparently it had been floating
>>> around in drafts. I had a quick question about the blanket inclusion
>>> of linux-firmware. Are there specific firmware images from this needed
>>> to support the minnowboard hardware, or is it only included for
>>> potential firmware for e.g. usb wireless adapters?
>>Many of the wifi drivers, need to load the firmware specific chip to get
>>wifi working. AFAIK there is no other hardware which need to pull
>>firmware fomr the linux-firmware package.
>
>
>Correct.
>
>
>
>
>Thanks for the clarification. It seems a bit iffy to include it in this
>way, to me, considering wifi support is both a distro and machine feature
>:) We should give some thought to how best to handle inclusion of wifi
>firmware, obeying both, in the long term.
>

I'm open to suggestions. We chose this path basically to avoid all the
questions about why this or that driver isn't included or doesn't work.
It's a bit of a problem with these types of boards where you (by design)
have no idea what people are going to do with it. A lot of these folks are
not deep systems people, they are high level broad scope integrators and
do some fascinating things, but they balk at rebuilding an OS to get the
driver support they need - it should just work. Yocto on the other hand is
about building highly customized/taylored images per device.... a bit of
an odd pairing really. Anyway - yes, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how
we might do this better.


--
Darren Hart					Open Source Technology Center
darren.hart at intel.com				            Intel Corporation