Radeon again, Was: Mainline Linux-libre for Chromebook pixel 2013?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Nov 29, 2015, "Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli" <GNUtoo at no-log.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 13:00:06 -0200
> Alexandre Oliva <lxoliva at fsfla.org> wrote:

>> I've taken a look at the driver, and it is buggy.  Even though it
>> works without the blob, it treats an -EINVAL return from
>> r*t_firmware_nowait as a hard error, instead of ignoring as it
>> could/should, to work even upstream, when the firmware loader is
>> disabled altogether in the build configuration.
> That sounds familiar.

> As I understand it, for the radeon driver which is in a similar
> situation

But it really isn't the same issue.

As Iru Cai has shown, the atmel driver is perfectly happy if it doesn't
get a blob in the background call.  It fails if the request to initiate
the background firmware loading fails, however.

radeon doesn't do background calls, and it fails if the blob isn't
found.

Those are very different logic and code paths, although some symptoms
might seem the same from the outside.

> What is the state of affairs with the radeon patch?

No change as far as I'm concerned.  I was still waiting for a patch for
deblob-<kver> from you.

That said, IIRC your original patch touched only one of the various
blob-loading files in the radeon drivers.  Was there any reason to not
use the same logic in others?  I ask because I have no means to test
this myself, due to lack of hardware; maybe you're in the same
situation, but confirmation would be desirable.

> -> What should eventually be done for this "patch". I remember talking
>    about sed and so on, but that's rather fragile.
>    Maybe keeping it as a plain git patch would be better. It could even
>    be rebased with git just to make the new patch.

patch and git are not programs we already rely on for deblobbing, and
I'd rather not add unnecessary dependencies.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer