[Sound-open-firmware] Distribution of sof firmware and tplg files

[Pierre-Louis Bossart]

> I'm not really convinced to handle .ldc in the other packages than the 
> debugging ones. In my opinion, you should maintain the complete SOF 
> binary firmware distribution in a separate package / tagged repository 
> for all firmware / topology / .ldc files as the upstream reference and 
> for the debugging. The ldc files do not belong to linux-firmware nor 
> alsa-ucm-conf nor alsa-topology-conf.
> 
> https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/2098
> 
> Also, if you like to release multiple versions of SOF firmware in the 
> linux-firmware package, it should be properly documented (the purpose, 
> what exact hardware is affected etc.). It is really difficult to have an 
> orientation there (and we as the maintainers for various distributions 
> should know what to do).
> 
> BTW: The SST firmware files are also affected with the lack of the 
> documentation. I believe that only few people can tell us what firmware 
> file belongs to the specific hardware / driver.

Thanks for challenging us and picking our brains.

I must admit I blindly followed the tradition, without asking questions. 
linux-firmware was required in the past and we also wanted to use 
alsa-conf-ucm for the rest. So conceptually I was set on a 2-part release.

If it's acceptable to distributions and users, it's true that having a 
TBD one-stop shop for all required binary/configuration/debug files, 
along with release collateral, would be a lot simpler. No risk of 
different parts flowing independently in different packages, pull 
requests being delayed, etc. Why not indeed?

That's be a big decision though so we'd need to have consensus from 
others (Debian, Chrome, Yocto, etc).

Also I am not clear on what you'd want to do with UCM files, keep them 
in alsa-conf but with firmware/topology somewhere else?

-Pierre