Re: [PATCH 1/2] request_firmware without a device

From: Shaohua Li
Date: Thu May 25 2006 - 23:43:13 EST


On Thu, 2006-05-25 at 12:24 +0200, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> > > The patch allows calling request_firmware without a 'struct device'.
> > > It appears we just need a name here from 'struct device'. I changed it
> > > to use a kobject as Patrick suggested.
> > > Next patch will use the new API to request firmware (microcode) for a CPU.
> >
> > But a cpu does have a struct device. Why not just use that?
> >
> > > +fw_setup_class_device_id(struct class_device *class_dev, struct kobject *kobj)
> > > {
> > > /* XXX warning we should watch out for name collisions */
> > > - strlcpy(class_dev->class_id, dev->bus_id, BUS_ID_SIZE);
> > > + strlcpy(class_dev->class_id, kobj->k_name, BUS_ID_SIZE);
> >
> > There's a function for this, kobject_name(), please never touch k_name
> > directly.
> >
> > > +EXPORT_SYMBOL(request_firmware_kobj);
> >
> > Ick, if you really want to do this, just fix up all callers of
> > request_firmware(), there aren't that many of them.
> >
> > But I don't recommend it anyway.
>
> I also disagree with this change at all. The callers of request_firmware
> should not fiddle around with kobject's to make this work. All of them
> have their struct device and they should use it.
So why we need a 'struct device'? I didn't see any point we need it. We
just need a 'name'.

> So I would propose that we fix the caller and the not request_firmware
> code. However one option would be calling it with NULL as device
> argument and it registers itself a dummy device for the operation.
This doesn't work, as we need a 'name'.

do we really need to differentiate between sysdev and device anymore. I
> recall a plan to unify all devices, but I might be wrong.
I'd like this idea. But it means many works. In addition, a sysdev could
have multiple drivers, and a 'device' can't to me.

Thanks,
Shaohua
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