[flashrom] idea: make flashrom a "driver" in linux kernel

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Am 30.01.2014 15:43 schrieb David Woodhouse:
> On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 13:27 +0000, The Gluglug wrote:
>> If (using flashrom as the backend) the linux kernel supports your flash 
>> chip, you could just use dd.
>>
>> What does the community think of this idea?
> For some chips/chipsets it already works. They would be MTD devices. And
> you can then use a flash file system on (part of) them, if they're big
> enough, etc.

The Linux MTD subsystem is really nice, but its use case (both target
hardware and desired usage) differs from what flashrom does. Both ways
of handling flash chips fit their own niche well. In theory you could
extend Linux MTD to grow more flashrom-like functions, and in theory you
could extend flashrom to grow more Linux MTD-like functions, but the
result would not be pretty.

flashrom supports programmers/controllers/interfaces which are too weird
(ICH hardware sequencing), too abstract (Dediprog SF*) and/or too
complex (FT*232 SPI) to be shoved into the Linux kernel. And even if
we'd be able to get all that stuff merged into the official Linux
kernel, users would have to upgrade the kernel every time a new flash
chip is released. That's a no-go for pretty much any installation I
know. Heck, you'd be completely stranded trying to replace the kernel on
a Linux live CD. Then there's the portability aspect. Writing kernel
code portable between different operating systems may be somewhat
feasible, but I've seen the wrapper layers for cross-platform network
drivers (something which is more standardized than the programmers
flashrom has to deal with) and they will make you want to wash your eyes
with bleach.

TL; DR: Not going to happen. Sorry.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/