From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from mail-iw0-f178.google.com ([209.85.223.178]:46631 "EHLO mail-iw0-f178.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752747AbZI1WSF (ORCPT ); Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:18:05 -0400 Received: by iwn8 with SMTP id 8so2802377iwn.33 for ; Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:18:09 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:17:49 -0700 Message-ID: <43e72e890909281517k23abaf8dvd3e84837ce307429@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Firmware versioning best practices To: linux-wireless Cc: reinette chatre , Kalle Valo , Johannes Berg , Christian Lamparter , Bob Copeland Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: The ath_hif_usb driver will require the ar9271 firmware file but in the future an open firmware might become available. The ar9170 driver already is under the same situation already: a closed firmware is available but an open firmware can be used, only thing is ar9170 uses the same firmware name for both. We *could* change ar9170 to use the Intel practice of tagging a version at the end of each firmware release, like ar9170-1.fw but ar9170 originally was implemented with a 2-stage firmware requirement and so ar9170-1.fw is already taken. ar9170 still needs a solution for the different firmwares, once we start supporting the open firmware through some sort of release but I'd like to address ath_hif_usb now early so that we don't run into these snags and use some decent convention that is easy to follow. As I noted above, Intel seems to use the device-1.fw, device-2.fw naming convention. Is this the best approach? Or shall we have the same firmware filename and simply query the firmware for a map of capabilities? Any other ideas? Luis