On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 13:45 +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 02/04/2013 01:32 PM, Ma Xiaojun wrote:
> >b43-fwcutter itself is just a firmware cutter as its name suggests.
> >http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Install_b43-fwcutter
>
> The thing is that absolutely nothing happens when installing the
> b43-fwcutter which I found confusing. So, obviously people have to
> ignore this package and always install the installer packages. This
> should be mentioned at least in the README.Debian or better in the
> package description.
>
> I also don't see why you can't just merge everything into one binary
> package. You install a package "b43-firmware", it detects your
> hardware in the preinst script and downloads and installs the
> firmware accordingly. If the detection fails, it should prompt
> whether to download the firmware anyway and then abort the
> installation or continue the installation, depending on the user
> choice.
>
> But maybe that's just me. I'd be happy if you have convincing
> arguments why it should be handled differently.
There is no reason why users shouldn't be able to use b43-fwcutter on systems
that do not have the hardware in question installed. The obvious use case is
to be able to extract the firmware for another system that does not have a
working internet connection in order to copy it via a thumbdrive.
I find the distinction into b43-fwcutter and the -installer packages to be
clear and correct. One problem with the b43-fwcutter package is its
description in that it states:
--- snip ---
Utility for extracting Broadcom 43xx firmware
fwcutter is a tool which can extract firmware from various source files.
It's written for BCM43xx driver files.
It grabs firmware for BCM43xx from website and install it.
--- snip ---
^^^^^^^^^^
Which should be corrected.
--
Wolodja <debian@babilen5.org>
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