On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 8:14 AM, Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina <zeroch...@gentoo.org> wrote: >>> Kernel sources providing /lib/firmware itself shouldn't be a problem >>> either, as that's just a dir, which many packages may own. The >>> individual firmware files would be a problem, but the USE=firmware >>> RDEPEND solution should solve that. >> > What is everyone's opinion of adding a USE=firmware option to pull in > PDEPEND="linux-firmware" in linux-2.eclass?
Not exactly an opinion, but a couple of notes: 1. Kernel's "make modules_install" triggers "make firmware_install", which installs a strict subset of linux-firmware (for enabled modules — e.g., "3com/typhoon.bin"). A way to work around that is to supply INSTALL_FW_PATH=... to make. 2. CONFIG_PREVENT_FIRMWARE_BUILD=y does not prevent installing firmware by "make modules_install". 3. Trough all this firmware discussion, everyone is acting as if it's obvious that linux-firmware was always preferred to individual packages. This is not the case — some Gentoo developers didn't even know about linux-firmware when creating individual packages, as is evident from messages in discussion. I tried to figure which to use some time ago, and came to conclusion that more often than not, individual packages are preferable, because they are versioned/slotted and go through a proper stabilization process (e.g., iwlwifi). Perhaps that conclusion was incorrect, but the point is that information on the subject was scarce, to say the least. -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte
