Hi I find it very annoying if you only have 3 firmware modules needed but you have to delete/comment-out all other entries in the /etc/portage/savedconfig/sys-kernel/linux-firmware-* file... Wouldn't it make much more sense to deliver an savedconfig file with all entries already commented out, so that the user then just need to remove the comment on the desired entries instead of going through the whole list and delete/uncomment everything else? ...JMTC
Wouldn't that mean that it installs nothing by default, or otherwise that the savedconfig file does not reflect what is installed?
Correct, I agree that ideally, the present functionality should be inverted, such that you don't have to have the overhead of installing *everything* before the things you actually need. Something like, perhaps, it has an 'emerge --config' setup that will unpack only the relevant firmwares instead of the whole shebang (sorta like tzdata?).
Installing a package without any files by default is against Gentoo tree policy. Also, we are using the savedconfig feature. We cannot change behavior just for linux-firmware package. Please file a new bug against base-system and eclass if you really think that this feature should change in general... When you want to change savedconfig behavior in general, you will have to provide answers for things like: Such a changed behavior will cause problems for new users: You would have to know what you need. Users starting with Gentoo already have problems building a kernel. That's why we ship default kernel configs with tools like genkernel or suggest to start from a kernel config used by the system from where you installed Gentoo (i.e. /proc/config.gz) because this config was obviously able to get your system running. Now imagine use would have to know which firmware _file_ they require, just knowing they are using bnx2 driver wouldn't be enough! And what do you do when the firmware _file_ name will change? I.e. you are using linux.4.14 for months and the driver for device X uses file Y. When you now upgrade to 4.19 the same device will suddenly need file Z. And it's rare but it's happening: Sometimes, especially for Wifi, such changes can also happen in new point releases (i.e. from 4.19.5 to 4.19.6). The problem is that something like that could end up in an unusable system. Therefore anything which can cause this is likely not a good _default_. What you are looking for is INSTALL_MASK which we already have. If you know what you are doing you don't need USE=savedconfig and could add a hard block for anything you know you will not need. I agree that current situation won't fit 100% and can be annoying if you are only interested in a few files and know what you are doing. But I am not aware of a solution which would improve situation for all (see my concerns above). Please share your idea if you have one... PS: Due to a bug 686348 it wasn't possible to provide a generic saved config file. I.e. you had to rename savedconfig for each new version. Now that this bug is resolved you can basically do what you requested: Just create /etc/portage/savedconfig/sys-kernel/linux-firmware file once and for all future installations/updates of sys-kernel/linux-firmware package we will only merge what's in that file from day 1.
