It is hard to enforce how vendors will version their firmware. On media, we have some drivers whose major means different hardware versions. For instance, on xc3028, v3.x means low voltage chips, while v2.x means "normal" voltage. We end changing the file name on Linux to avoid the risk of damaging the hardware, as using v27 firmware on low power chips damage them. So, we have:
drivers/media/tuners/xc2028.h:#define XC2028_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE "xc3028-v27.fw" drivers/media/tuners/xc2028.h:#define XC3028L_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE "xc3028L-v36.fw"As their main market is not Linux - nor PC - as their main sales are on TV sets, and them don't officially support Linux, there's nothing we can do to enforce it.
IMO we need a more generic text here to indicate that Linux firmware files should be defined in a way that it should be possible to detect when there are incompatibilities with past versions. So, I would say, instead:
Firmware files shall be designed in a way that it allows checking for firmware ABI version changes. It is recommended that firmware files to be versioned with at least major/minor version.
This sounds good, will update with this.
It
- is suggested that the firmware files in linux-firmware be named with
- some device specific name, and just the major version.
The
- major/minor/patch versions should be stored in a header in the
- firmware file for the driver to detect any non-ABI fixes/issues.
I would also make this more generic. On media, we ended adding the firmware version indicated at the file name. For instance, xc4000 driver checks for two firmware files:
drivers/media/tuners/xc4000.c:#define XC4000_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE "dvb-fe-xc4000-1.4.fw" drivers/media/tuners/xc4000.c:#define XC4000_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE_NEW "dvb-fe-xc4000-1.4.1.fw"
This is probably fine for products where development never produces much firmwares, but it quickly becomes unmanageable when you end up with _NEW_NEW_NEW etc.
I'd rather not encourage this sort of thing unless it is totally outside our control. So I'd like to keep the guidelines for when we have some control what we'd recommend.
In this case I'd have recommended you put the 1.4.1 in the header of the fw, and just have it called dvb-fe-xc4000-1.fw and overwrite the NEW with the OLD, I understand we likely don't have the control here.
- firmware files in linux-firmware should be overwritten with the newest
- compatible major version.
For me "shall" is mandatory, while "should" is optional.
In this specific case, I'm not so sure if overriding it is the best thing to do on all subsystems. I mean, even with the same ABI, older firmware usually means that some bugs and/or limitations will be present there.
As long as you can detect the minor/patch versions from the firmware file after loading it you should be able to do sufficient workarounds.
That's specially true on codecs: even having the same ABI, older versions won't support decoding newer protocols. We have one case with some digital TV decoders that only support some Cable-TV protocols with newer firmware versions. We have also one case were remote controller decoding is buggy with older firmwares. On both situations, the ABI didn't change.
If the only way to figure that out is by the filename or minor version, then so be it, but where people have some control I'd rather provide some harder guidelines.
Dave.