Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 18:58:18 -0700
From: dmk@uask4it-91 (David Kahn)
Subject: Item #268: Core recommended practice: "version" property

P1275 Open Firmware Working Group Proposal -- Proposal #268 Ver 1

Title:		Standard "version" property.

Author:		David Kahn

Date:		19 May 1995

Ed/Tech:	Technical

Synopsis:	Create standard definition for "version" S

Doc & Version:	Core Doc, Recomended Practice.

Scope:		Recomended practice to all implementations.

Problem:	There is no property to reflect the version of
		the contents of a device. (i.e. flashprom, for
		example).

Proposal:	

Create a recomended practice, standardizing the following property name:

"version"						S

    Standard *property name* to define the contents of a device.

*prop-encoded-array*
    One or more text strings, each encoded with ENCODE-STRING.

Manufacturer-dependent string(s) that generally represent some encoding
of the version of the contents of the device. For example, one or more
flash-prom device nodes in a device tree would export the model and name
of the flash device in the "model" and "name" properties, respectively.
The "version" property might contain several manufacturer specific strings,
each representing the internal version of the contents of the flash prom.

NOTE: Generally this property is useful only for identifying the
contents of a device (perhaps for field service personel), and should
not be used by system software to determine the capabilities of the 
contents of the device.

Discussion:

We needed a way to represent the prom versions in properties in the
device tree, for machines that have several flash-prom nodes, each
with potentially different contents.

Should we stipulate that there should be an /openprom version property,
that contains the string representing the "running" version of the
firmware?  This makes a difference on server MPs each with their own
potential version of a CPU PROM. The /openprom "model" property isn't
very useful for this ... it should probably be the version of the
interface, but not necessarily the point version of a real prom release.



[ P1275 Item #268 -- Received: Fri May 19 19:00:37 PDT 1995 ]