here's the bug for what we talked on irc ;) xf86-video-ati should either mention radeon-ucode or pull it in if VIDEO_CARDS=radeon or is there a firmware use flag?
There are some chips (like the RV350 in my case) that don't need an external firmware image, because the firmware is already delivered with the kernel. Maybe we need a finer-grained VIDEO_CARDS, or a USE flag (as you suggested)?
The firmware is needed by the kernel (for KMS on newer chipsets), not by xf86-video-ati. I suggested in bug 361903 comment 0 to have an optional dependency on the sys-kernel/linux-firmware package, but the response was not positive.
I don't mind if xf86-video-ati mentioned/suggested that firmware package if that's the nearest thing related to it. But I don't see a point in extending VIDEO_CARDS or adding USEflags just for that reason. We can fine-grain such a message with what we have now but no more.
Putting an einfo or something in the ebuild depending on which drivers are selected is ok I suppose :)
*** Bug 440884 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
any update on how this will/should be handled yet?
virtual/linux-sources[firmware] now depends on sys-kernel/linux-firmware, so I think no further changes to packages are needed. Enabling the flag by default in the desktop profile might be a good idea.
(In reply to Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn from comment #7) > virtual/linux-sources[firmware] now depends on sys-kernel/linux-firmware, so > I think no further changes to packages are needed. > > Enabling the flag by default in the desktop profile might be a good idea. ++ :)
It's not xf86-video-ati that requires the firmware.
