> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008,
david@lang.hm wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>>
>>> That's a totally bogus argument.
>>
>> you misunderstood me. the people pushing request_firmware() are doing so on
>> the basis that they won't have to use kernel ram to hold the firmware. the
>> people pushing for having the option of building the firmware into the module
>> are acknowleding that this may use a little more ram, but they see it as being
>> more reliable.
>
> I'm just saying that it's a totally bogus argument to claim that it takes
> less memory - Either way.
>
> As to reliability, I don't buy that, especially with a generic interface,
> and with a way to link the thing in-kernel anyway. Using common
> infrastructure is going to be more reliable.
>
>>> I don't know why people get confused about this. I suspect that people
>>> kind of expect that since they need to reload the firmware when resuming
>>> the device, they should also do the "request_firmware()" at resume time.
>>
>> according to David W they would, becouse the driver would not keep the
>> firmware in kernel memory after it's initialized
>
> And if so, David W is a total moran, and shouldn't have been doing this.
>
> The fact is, there _are_ good arguments for request_firmware(), but they
> have nothing what-so-ever to do with memory use or anything like that.
>
> The argument for request_firmware() is that it's a good _single_ interface
> to the whole firmware issue, allowing us to split up the driver from the
> firmware without every driver having to do some hack of its own.
