[sane-devel] where to put firmware files?

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 09:35:03AM +0200, Michael Herder wrote:
> I don't know, whether I understand this correctly, but isn't the installation 
> directory only important, if the firmware file is included in/installed with 
> SANE (something that most backend authors won't do due to licensing issues) ?

It's more important in this case, yes.

> If shipping the firmware files with SANE is planned, then it's IMHO ok to 
> rename the file, because in this case no user interaction is required. One 
> could for instance add the md5sum to the file name, which should result in a 
> unique name. Or one could use uuidgen (or another method) to create a unique 
> identifier.

You won't be able to provide the firmware files for every scanner on
the market. So there must be some easy way for the user to place the
firmware that came with the scanner in a directory without thinking
about md5sums or similar.

> If it isn't planned to ship the firmware with SANE, then it's most important 
> (again IMHO), that the user can set the path in the .conf file. This way a 
> user can e.g load the firmware from a windows drive, which (s)he has perhaps 
> mounted anyways.

Right. The directory I'm talking about is just the default. The
gt68xx.conf file looks like this:

# Autodetect Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU, Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB Plus,
# Artec Ultima 2000 and several other GT-6801-based scanners
usb 0x05d8 0x4002
#firmware "PS1fw.usb"

So if users want to use a different file they can use e.g.

firmware "SBfw.usb"

If they want a different directory:

firmware "/opt/my/favourite/path/to/sane/PS1fw.usb"

Bye,
  Henning