Bug#635840: TP-Link TL-WN821N v2 doesn't work with kernel 3.0
Hi
On Wednesday 31 August 2011, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-12 at 21:55 +0200, Stefan Lippers-Hollmann wrote:
> > On Friday 12 August 2011, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2011-08-01 at 19:36 -0300, Willian Gustavo Veiga wrote:
[...]
> > Given that the licensing for carl9170fw is a bit special[1] for a
> > firmware image targetted at a different architecture and not easy to
> > fulfill in a way that avoids wget on the buildds or code duplication,
> > I've started some preliminary packaging for it at:
> >
> > Vcs-Svn: svn://svn.berlios.de/fullstory/firmware-carl9170/trunk
> > Vcs-Browser: http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/fullstory/firmware-carl9170/trunk/
> >
> > While this should meet upstream license conditions in wording and
> > spirit and may pass ftp-master checking, its strong dependencies
> > on packaging structures of binutils-source, newlib-source and the
> > versioned gcc-$(GCC_VER)-source make it rather fragile and high
> > maintenance, not to say downright ugly (looking at the list of
> > build-depends). This packaging compiles the sh-2 cross-compiling
> > environment at build-time, as introducing a newlib based sh-2
> > cross-compiling toolchain for this single package is hardly a preferred
> > option for Debian and binutils/ newlib/ gcc maintainers.
> [...]
>
> I suggest that you ask the FTP team whether they consider it necessary
> for the package to be built in this way.
In case of carl9170fw, license compliance isn't the only reason that
made me building it and its toolchain from source. carl9170fw upstream
doesn't provide binary firmware images and neither release (source-)
tarballs for carl9170fw, the only distribution is through git tags on
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/chr/carl9170fw.git
http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/chr/carl9170fw.git
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/chr/carl9170fw.git
which means any packager will regularly have to build the firmware on
his own, in order to make it available for distribution. Binaries made
available from
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/carl9170#Firmware-1
are rarely updated and often only from third parties (it's a wiki).
While using the upstream provided toolchain target works well (and is
much faster for subsequent builds, as the toochain won't have to get
rebuilt all the time), I chose this route of using
{binutils,newlib,gcc-4.6}-source in order to get carl9170fw into main,
instead of contrib.
> firmware-free includes source code but does not actually use it at
> package build time. It is rather taken on trust that the source code
> can actually be built, though you have prompted me to actually check
> this...
In case of carl9170fw, the upstream toolchain target works reliably and
is kept up to date with upstream toolchain changes, so maybe it would
qualify for the same treatment as shipped PDF files or similar
documentation, if it can be rebuilt, but isn't as part of the standard
buildsystem. However the git/source-only distribution for carl9170fw
didn't actually make me look into this.
Regards
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
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