Firmware to support LTS kernels

[Andy Whitcroft]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 08:48:54AM -0600, Tim Gardner wrote:
> With the advent of LTS kernels, maintenance of the linux-firmware
> package in Precise is becoming a bit of a problem. Due to SRU policy,
> updates to firmware files has been difficult. It has recently become a
> bit easier to _add_ new firmware files, but suffice it to say, Precise
> linux-firmware has diverged significantly from upstream.
> 
> My original plan had been to carry any new or updated firmware files
> required by a particular LTS kernel in the kernel package itself. That
> has the advantage of being independent of the Precise linux-firmware
> package. However, there are 2 disadvantages to that scheme:
> 
> 1) If you have multiple LTS kernels installed, then you'll have multiple
> copies of the updated firmware also installed. Given the size of the
> kernel itself, the relatively small firmware files might not have much
> of an impact.
> 
> 2) Each subsequent LTS kernel package has to carry the cumulative
> firmware updates from the previous LTS kernels, e.g., the Saucy LTS
> kernel must carry all additions from Quantal and Raring.
> 
> I received some objections to this approach wherein it was suggested
> that I just add new files to Precise linux-firmware to support LTS
> kernels. The issues I have with that are:
> 
> 1) Users that never install an LTS kernel continue to accrue new (and
> useless to them) firmware files.
> 2) Updates to existing files are sometimes difficult to verify.
> 3) Catching up to upstream is gonna require a massive SRU effort.
> 
> If we're gonna continue to update Precise linux-firmware to support LTS
> kernels, then I guess I'd like to reset the content of the Precise
> package to be that of Saucy (which is current with upstream). Saucy is
> mostly a superset of Precise, but there _have_ been a few modifications
> to existing firmware files.
> 
> Thoughts ? Things are only going to get worse with the 14.04 kernel in
> Precise.

Could we take a middle ground and backport the firmware package as well,
as in have a single linux-firmware-lts which has the accumulated extras
and depends on the main one in precise, and is further depended on by
the lts kernels.

We might be able to automate that, ie literally take the saucy once, and
the precise one and run something to make a delta package for precise.

-apw