Please be aware that this project is not just a local Android project. It is actually intended to (roughly--see NOTES below) match up with the upstream git repository hosted at:
https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware.git
Mirrored at:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/
See also the upstream README.md.
The local Android project is managed with Copybara, though used in a slightly non-standard way. In order to fit into Android‘s infrastructure that tracks licensing and also to let us to update each firmware individually, our Copybara script doesn’t act on the whole repo. Instead it acts on smaller groups of upstream files and keeps each group in its own directory.
Each group is a logical set of files that someone may want to include in an Android product. All files in a given group must share the same license. If two files normally go together but share different licenses then they'll need separate groups and Android products will simply need to know to include both groups.
First and foremost, you should talk to the legal counsel for your Android product and make sure they have no problems with you including any firmware that you want. Nearly all firmware here is classified with a licnese that is “By Exception Only”. That's normal / expected but you still need to get approval.
After you've got approval, including this firmware in your Android product is as simple as adding to your PRODUCT_PACKAGES. For instance, if you wanted to include the r8152 firmware:
PRODUCT_PACKAGES += linux_firmware_r8152
In order to get firmware added to this repo, the process is roughly:
firmware_import_workflow to the copy.bara.sky file and land it as an ANDROID: change../run_copybara.sh ${NAME}. That will generate an IMPORT CL for you.The Copybara script should handle parsing the upstream WHENCE file for you to confirm that you specified the correct licenses. If it gives an error it‘s possible that you may need to improve the copy.bara.sky script’s license grokking logic.
Importing firmware files to this repo is considered a 3rd party import and thus needs approval. Details in go/android-linux-firmware-approval-flow.
If we have to (due to an urgent bugfix), there‘s no technical reason we couldn’t make local changes to firmware here, but this is strongly discouraged because any of your changes will be lost the next time someone runs Copybara for your firmware. If there is no choice then special approval will be needed.
When thinking about getting firmware installed, remember that disk space is at a premium. Products should specify exactly which firmware they need. In other words, you'll want to create a group for “Marvell 8897 SDIO WiFi” part, probably not “Marvell WiFi” or (even worse) a group of all firmare for “Marvell”.
If you have firmware that is not appropriate for the upstream linux-firmware project then this isn‘t the repository you’re looking for. In such a case you should find another place to put your firmware.
Before trying to find another place for your firmware, however, please remember that there‘s a pretty big benefit to getting firmware landed in the upstream linux-firmware project. Notably we want upstream to be testing / using the same firmware that Android is using. This makes it more likely for our systems to keep working across kernel uprevs and also more likely that someone upstream will fix a problem and we’ll get the fix through stable merges.