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

[Mark Pearson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sound-open-firmware <sound-open-firmware-bounces at alsa-
> project.org> On Behalf Of Pierre-Louis Bossart
> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2020 10:47 AM
> 
> > The all-in-one package is useful for:
> >
> > 1) debugging .ldc files - they don't belong to any of the upstream repos
> 
> I just want to clarify something on those files: Rather than adding
> strings to all our traces, when generating the firmware we strip them
> out to reduce the firmware footprint, and the actual strings are stored
> in the ldc. When you want to extract traces, the sof-logger tool
> substitutes the codes for human-readable strings. The ldc files only
> existing in relation with the initial firmware they were extracted from.
> 
> I don't see at all why these ldc files can't be distributed along with
> the firmware. In fact, we could change the firmware format and add them
> in a single file, which would be stripped during firmware download and
> you'd not even know about it...
> 
> > 2) SOF release - you have full control to put all things together and
> >     we can use this as a reference; eventually, we can update the community
> >     integration repos from this
> 
> So we are talking about multiple integration channels, that's not so
> good for us
> 
> > 3) extra firmware files (not used by default kernel configuration / code)
> 
> We don't have such cases at the moment.
> 
> > It does not mean that the stable code should not be pushed to the
> > "integration" repositories (where the code is merged from the multiple
> > sources). But in case of issues (debugging) or if you have special users
> > (firmware for special hardware variants requiring the extra kernel
> > parameters / setup), the users might look back to the all-in-one repo
> > (SOF project release).
> 
> I would really like to have all .ldc distributed by default so that we
> can ask for traces without requiring any install shenanigans. People are
> able to use alsa-info.sh, and I consider the .ldc files as a extension
> helping provide DSP traces.

Hi all,

I've been following this thread with interest and thank you all for your efforts on working on this.
Did we reach consensus on the solution? If we did I think I missed it. Please let me know.

We have a lot of users waiting for this and I know I'll be working with the distro's to get this rolled out when it's available. 
If there's anything I can do to help let me know - I don't have enough expertise to comment on the solution so I've been keeping quiet 😊.

Thanks
Mark