[Intel-gfx] [PATCH] drm/i915: Remove Firmware URL.

[Rodrigo Vivi]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 09:06:14AM +0000, Chris Wilson wrote:
> Quoting Rodrigo Vivi (2018-01-29 21:40:27)
> > On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 08:45:24PM +0000, Chris Wilson wrote:
> > > Quoting Srivatsa, Anusha (2018-01-29 20:17:25)
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > >-----Original Message-----
> > > > >From: Vivi, Rodrigo
> > > > >Sent: Friday, January 26, 2018 10:22 AM
> > > > >To: intel-gfx at lists.freedesktop.org
> > > > >Cc: Vivi, Rodrigo <rodrigo.vivi at intel.com>; Srivatsa, Anusha
> > > > ><anusha.srivatsa at intel.com>
> > > > >Subject: [PATCH] drm/i915: Remove Firmware URL.
> > > > >
> > > > >The right place for the firmware is linux-firmware.git.
> > > > >We shouldn't advertise anywhere to users to start downloading firmware blobs
> > > > >manually.
> > > > >
> > > > >Also it seems that 01.org page is outdated and it doesn't contain DMC 1.27 for
> > > > >SKL, for instance. Probably other firmware releases are missing there, while they
> > > > >are part of the official linux-firmware.git.
> > > 
> > > Then get them onto 01.org. If Intel cannot be relied on to provide their
> > > own firmwares, the alternative is to stop shipping blobs entirely.
> > 
> > I understand your point. But the goal is to have only one place and this place
> > is linux-firmware.git.
> 
> If a user sees this message, then linux-firmware has failed them...

It could be other cases like:

- user has just not updated linux-firmware package from their distro.
- distro failed to update the linux-firmware.git
- initrd didn't get properly updated to include the required blob.
- build-in i915.

> > The web-page will still have the information about the firmware and
> > a text explaining the linux-firmware repository.
> > 
> > But what I want is to avoid any users with the impression they
> > have to manually go there and install anything.
> 
> Since we tie firmware to kernel version, I think it behooves us to carry
> a complete history; and redundancy is never a bad idea. Fwiw, the local
> storage should be a linux-firmware.git branch so that files are tracked
> universally.

So changing the link to https://cgit.freedesktop.org/drm/drm-firmware/ ?
Where we are going to publish the firmware before propagating to linux-firmware.git.

But on this case regular users couldn't simply download and copy to /usr/lib/firmware.
Most of "user friendly" distros will have the initrd step.

Right now we have a install.sh script along with firmware blobs at 01.org.
But that script forces an initrd rebuild what forces the firmware in. However
there is no uninstall option and if we released the install.sh with some typo (like
current case) there is no easy way to go back and update the already released one.

> -Chris