[sane-devel] Intended change of config file handling

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On 2006-01-09 14:36, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> But my question is:
> Can the backend automatically determine the right firmware file
> for a particular model?

Yes and no :-)

I'm talking about gt68xx scanners but I guess it's similar for others.
For the gt68xx scanners there is usually one specific firmware for
each device. As most devices use different vendor/product ids,
automatic firmware upload based on these ids is possible and already
done in the gt68xx backend. There are several scanners which use the
same vendor and product id but different firmware. In this case manual
user intervention is necessary: adding an "override" to specify the
exact scanner model in the configuration file. Based on this override
the firmware file is selected (and other settings for that scanner
model are made).

> If yes, it would be great because then it would be possible to
> ask the manufacturers to allow re-distribution of their firmware
> files "as is" so that all firmware files for all models of a
> backend could be stored in the same firmware directory
> and the backend would pick the right one for a particular model.

This is what I do here at home: All the firmware files I have are
located at /usr/local/share/sane/gt68xx/ and the gt68xx backend
automatically uploads the correct firmware to the correct scanner.
There is no problem with using several scanners at the same time, if
they have different vendor/product ids.

Even if we got manufacturer's permission, I wouldn't want to add the
firmware files to the sane-backends distribution. This would add one
more (or several more) licenses which are non-open source.

Putting the firmware files on a website (with the permission of the
manufacturer) is ok. That's what I did with the Mustek firmware files
in case of gt68xx.

Bye,
  Henning