On Saturday 28 February 2009 11:47:57 Tim Jackson wrote:

I maintain alsa-firmware and the following bug regarding file conflicts between recent versions of kernel-firmware and alsa-firmware got raised today:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=487873

I'm not really familiar with the kernel package maintenance, nor who/what governs what firmware goes into kernel-firmware (and indeed how that is related to the upstream kernel). I had a cursory look at the kernel spec in CVS but that didn't appear to have any relevant recent changes that were obvious.

I did a diff between the firmware in alsa-firmware and in kernel-firmware-2.6.29-0.172.rc6.git4.fc11 and it's clear that although there are some overlaps, much of the audio firmware in alsa-firmware isn't in kernel-firmware.

The current conflicting files are:

ess/* korg/* sb16/* yamaha/ds1_ctrl.fw yamaha/ds1_dsp.fw yamaha/ds1e_ctrl.fw

Things that are in alsa-firmware but NOT in the above version of kernel-firmware are:

asihpi/* digiface* 3g* ea/* emu/* mixart/* multiface* pcxhr/* vx/* yamaha/yss225_registers.bin [usx2y, which does something funky so it's not in /lib/firmware]

Either way, it looks like we need to work together on this.

• I'm happy to just drop the conflicting files from alsa-firmware - is that the right thing to do?

I'd say yes. The versions shipped in the kernel are (supposed to be) known to work with the matching shipped kernel code.

• Are the above audio firmware files in kernel-firmware there to stay?

They're put into kernel-firmware as part of the kernel's firmware "build" process, so as long as they're part of the kernel, yeah, they'll be there.

• Is there a long term goal to bring all the firmware from alsa-firmware upstream into the kernel-firmware package?

No clue... Would have to talk to some alsa folks.