[PATCH 10] ARM: Add support for IXP4xx CPU and for Goramo Multilink router platform.

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 20:36 Wed 22 Dec     , Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
> Sascha Hauer <s.hauer at pengutronix.de> writes:
> 
> >> why not put the NPE firmware in the env?
> >
> > That's a good idea. This way we can tell the users to put the firmware
> > to arch/arm/boards/.../env/firmware before compilation and avoid
> > redistribution problems if there are any. Another plus is that the
> > barebox binary is not larger than it has to be.
> > The only downside is that the environment gets bigger as it duplicates
> > the firmware, but even this could be avoided if we add a second (non
> > environment) filesystem image.
> 
> Actually, there is more. There is plenty of free space in Barebox'
> region (2 pages 128 KB each), and the microcode isn't likely to ever
> change (unless Intel releases docs/sources, of course).
> 
> I don't want it in user-writable area since it could be incidentally
> erased. Without the microcode Ethernet interfaces are not functional,
> and I'm not sure all users would appreciate it if they had to download
> it back with [XY]-modem (or another C-kermit) :-) Even TFTP is sometimes
> black magic for some of them.
> 
> Obviously, the microcode is optional, and especially NPE-A one isn't at
> all used by Barebox (Linux uses it for driving sync serial interfaces).
> I don't consider the microcode a part of Barebox, like the
> /lib/firmware/* blobs aren't part of Linux.
> 
> Also it's simpler to export the microcode to Linux when it's in fixed
> well-aligned locations.
I'm working on a fs support in linux of the barebox env

so linux could get it easly also

but I prefer to be able to change my micro code as some of the people who work
on IXP have acess to it to modify it. So I think its a good option

so as linux it will be better to put it in a fs like /lib/firmware

Best Regards,
J.