[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Firmware signing

[David Woodhouse]

On Tue, 2015-07-28 at 11:54 -0700, josh at joshtriplett.org wrote:
> 
> For the drivers I'm most familiar with, new versions of firmware have
> new filenames and are requested from userspace in most-preferred to
> least-preferred order.  The expectation of those drivers is that any
> given firmware version should be binary-identical.

Those drivers are Doing It Wrong™.

The filename of a firmware image is intended to be like the soname of a
library.

If the firmware is ABI-compatible and just has some bugs fixed or
performance improvements, then you don't need to change the driver at
all. You just get the new version of the firmware and it all works.

Only if the driver *needs* to change the way it talks to the firmware,
should the filename change.

-- 
David Woodhouse                            Open Source Technology Centre
David.Woodhouse at intel.com                              Intel Corporation
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