If I see it correctly, your point is that the firmware loader is
totally broken and needs replacing. That's fine, and I won't say
otherwise. But it doesn't seem that such replacement is under way
and, in the meanwhile, we are stuck with what we have. I'm not
defending the current loader but, while we have it, we might as
well not have it freeze the whole kernel for a minute waiting
for something that won't happen.
Note that the problem is not getting the driver to work---I can
do that pretty easily. The problem is that there's a number of
drivers that, just because they require firmware, will hang the
kernel on boot if built in unless an initramfs is carefully
prepared. An allyesconfig kernel could freeze for 10 minutes
during boot just because it came across 10 devices requiring
firmware, even if you don't intend to use them.
I agree. That's why I sent the patch, to make it work better.
I agree again. But the fact that it didn't get fixed so far
doesn't mean that it can never get fixed, does it?
Also, note that I'm not proposing massive changes, or changes
that will break things for other people (not intentionally,
anyway), or that will add complexity and unmaintainability
to the kernel. They try to do a reasonable thing and are
small and to the point.
Javier
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