GNU Linux-libre 5.7-gnu

[Alexandre Oliva]

GNU Linux-libre 5.7-gnu cleaning-up scripts, cleaned-up sources, and
cleaning-up logs (including tarball signatures) are now available from
our git-based release archive git://linux-libre.fsfla.org/releases.git/
tags {scripts,sources,logs}/v5.7-gnu.

Tarballs and incremental patches were still slowly getting compressed as
I started writing this.  It took me so long to write this up that by now
they are probably ready to be published, along with scripts and logs, at
<https://www.fsfla.org/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/5.7-gnu/>.

We will not create or publish binary xdeltas any more: tarballs and
patches are now created with git archive and git diff, respectively.
So, even if you want a tarball, you don't have to wait for the
compression to complete on our end.  Update the git repo, and run:

  git checkout logs/v5.7-gnu &&
  git archive --format tar --prefix=linux-5.7/ \
    sources/v5.7-gnu > linux-libre-5.7-gnu.tar &&
  gpg --verify linux-libre-5.7-gnu.tar.sign

This will get you the same tarball and signature that, once compressed,
will be published at the usual place.  Note that the --prefix= was
maintained like that of the corresponding upstream release, so that
anyone already used to downloading our tarballs and dealing with the
unusual prefix doesn't have to make any changes.


No changes were required to the cleaning up scripts since -rc7-gnu,
already published under the new release procedure, though a little too
late for it to be useful.

The git repository is already populated with scripts, sources and logs
for past releases since Linux-libre became a GNU project; earlier
releases might be added at a later time.  The imported sources, scripts,
logs and signatures are the result of long-time hard work by Jason Self,
in the git repo https://jxself.org/git/linux-libre.git.  Nearly all of
the branches, tags and commits in the new repo are taken directly from
there, though I've verified all of the sources/ and scripts/ tags and
corrected a few mismatches that AFAICT followed from errors in the SVN
repository.  The main exception is the storage of logs and tarball
signatures; he'd used git notes, but those didn't quite work for me, so
I turned them into a separate tree of tags with logs and tarball
signatures.  Alas, I failed to bring the .log signatures into it.  Will
fix, and move the tags.


The 5.7 upstream release removed the i1480 uwb driver, that we used to
clean up, but added a crypto driver for the Marvell OcteonTX CPT, for
Mediatek MT7622 WMAC, for Qualcomm IPA, for the Azoteq
IQS620A/621/622/624/625 Multi-function device, for IDT 82P33xxx PTP
clock, and a Modem Host Interface (MHI) bus driver, all of which
required cleaning up.  Actually, the MHI bus one is tentative: I
couldn't quite figure out what it is that it loads, so I've
conservatively blocked it in the likely case it is a piece of non-Free
Software.

Some further adjustments were required on account of the introduction of
the function firmware_request_platform to the firmware-loading
interface, of the usual assortment of false positives all over, and blob
adjustments in AMD GPU, Arm64 DTS files, Meson VDec, Realtek Bluetooth,
m88ds3103 dvb frontend, Mediatek mt8173 VPU, Qualcomm Venus, Broadcom
FMAC, Mediatek 7622 and 7663 wifi, silead x86 touchscreen; of the
movement of the cleaned-up mscc phy driver (and new blob names in it)
and wd719x documentation within the source tree; and of something very
unexpected: the introduction of binary blobs as arrays of numbers in
source code for gen7 i915 gpus.


I unfortunately could not find correspoding sources for the new binary
blobs introduced in such an old-fashioned way, and they're big enough
and not regular enough that I could just assume them to be data rather
than code, so I've removed them.  If you come across source code for
those bits, or can explain to me how transparent and trivial they are
once they're disassembled with existing Free tools, I'll be very glad to
restore them.


Other relevant changes were made to the deblob-check script:

- its self-test now uses a safer $echo instead of echo to feed itself
the test patterns, and to complain in case they fail; some of the
patterns got mangled (unintended backslash transformations) by /bin/sh's
echo in Trisquel 8.  That's a well-known shell portability issue that we
had a fix for, but that somehow hadn't come up before in the context of
the testsuite.

- I moved the block of default suspicious patterns after the Linux- or
patch-specific ones.  This enables these default patterns to be
overridden by longer matches (e.g., cleaning up a trailing comma along
with the new Intel presumed blobs).  In Non-Deterministic Automata-based
regular expression engines, such as those in GNU awk and GNU sed, this
doesn't make a difference, because the longest match is always
preferred, but in engines that process alternatives left-to-right and
take the first match, like Python's and Perl's, there was no way to
override the blob sequence as needed.  Now there is.


For up-to-the-minute news, join us on #linux-libre of irc.gnu.org
(Freenode), or follow me (@lxoliva) on Twister <http://twister.net.co/>,
Secure Scuttlebutt, GNU social at social.libreplanet.org, Diaspora* at
pod.libreplanetbr.org or pump.io at identi.ca.  Check the link in the
signature for direct links.


Be Free! with GNU Linux-libre.


What is GNU Linux-libre?
------------------------

  GNU Linux-libre is a Free version of the kernel Linux (see below),
  suitable for use with the GNU Operating System in 100% Free
  GNU/Linux-libre System Distributions.
  http://www.gnu.org/distros/

  It removes non-Free components from Linux, that are disguised as
  source code or distributed in separate files.  It also disables
  run-time requests for non-Free components, shipped separately or as
  part of Linux, and documentation pointing to them, so as to avoid
  (Free-)baiting users into the trap of non-Free Software.
  http://www.fsfla.org/anuncio/2010-11-Linux-2.6.36-libre-debait

  Linux-libre started within the gNewSense GNU/Linux distribution.
  It was later adopted by Jeff Moe, who coined its name, and in 2008
  it became a project maintained by FSF Latin America.  In 2012, it
  became part of the GNU Project.

  The GNU Linux-libre project takes a minimal-changes approach to
  cleaning up Linux, making no effort to substitute components that
  need to be removed with functionally equivalent Free ones.
  Nevertheless, we encourage and support efforts towards doing so.
  http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LinuxLibre:Devices_that_require_non-free_firmware

  Our mascot is Freedo, a light-blue penguin that has just come out
  of the shower.  Although we like penguins, GNU is a much greater
  contribution to the entire system, so its mascot deserves more
  promotion.  See our web page for their images.
  http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/

What is Linux?
--------------

  Linux is a clone of the Unix kernel [...]

(snipped from Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    he/him    https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
Free Software Evangelist              Stallman was right, but he's left :(
GNU Toolchain Engineer           Live long and free, and prosper ethically