Due to some bug with the nouveau firmware I have to use the following lines in my kernel configuration: CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL=y CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="nouveau/nve6_fuc409c nouveau/nve6_fuc409d nouveau/nve6_fuc41ac nouveau/nve6_fuc41ad" CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="firmware" CONFIG_CMDLINE="nouveau.config=\"NvGrUseFw=1\"" in order to use the Nvidia binary firmware. The file "nve6_fuc409c" and friends are extracted from the Nvidia binary blod. This workaround was suggested from the nouveau project. Up to kernel version 3.12.12 this solution has been working perfectly. If I placed the files "nve6_fuc409c", ... in the specified directory in the kernel source dir, the files were included into the kernel image. If I missed to place the files, I got a compiler error that the files were missing ("make: No rule to create target 'nve6_fuc409c'" or similar.) Now, beginning with 3.12.13 and later it does not matter if the external firmware files are available or not. The build process always finishes successfully but the files are not included in the kernel image. Probably this is the reason why it does not matter if the files are available or not. It seems that the config line CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="nouveau/nve6_fuc409c nouveau/nve6_fuc409d nouveau/nve6_fuc41ac nouveau/nve6_fuc41ad" is ignored in some way. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create a kernel config that requests to include some external firmware into the kernel image (i.e. use CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="some file") 2. Ensure that "some file" is missing 3. Compile the kernel Actual Results: The kernel image is compiled successfully. Expected Results: Compilation should fail with an error that indicates that "some file" is missing.
I'm ambivalent on this, if you still have strong feelings, it might be worth it to take this upstream at lkml.org or bugzilla.kernel.org
