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1 The following is a list of files and features that are going to be
2 removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what
3 exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing
4 the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also
5 be removed from this file.
7 ---------------------------
9 What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
10 dev->power.power_state
11 dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
12 When: July 2007
13 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
14 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
15 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
16 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
17 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
18 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
19 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
20 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
22 ---------------------------
24 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
25 When: December 2005
26 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
27 O_DIRECT can be used instead
28 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
30 ---------------------------
32 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
33 When: June 2007
34 Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
35 Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
36 (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
37 raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
38 Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
40 ---------------------------
42 What: dv1394 driver (CONFIG_IEEE1394_DV1394)
43 When: June 2007
44 Why: Replaced by raw1394 + userspace libraries, notably libiec61883. This
45 shift of application support has been indicated on www.linux1394.org
46 and developers' mailinglists for quite some time. Major applications
47 have been converted, with the exception of ffmpeg and hence xine.
48 Piped output of dvgrab2 is a partial equivalent to dv1394.
49 Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
51 ---------------------------
53 What: ieee1394 core's unused exports (CONFIG_IEEE1394_EXPORT_FULL_API)
54 When: January 2007
55 Why: There are no projects known to use these exported symbols, except
56 dfg1394 (uses one symbol whose functionality is core-internal now).
57 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
59 ---------------------------
61 What: ieee1394's *_oui sysfs attributes (CONFIG_IEEE1394_OUI_DB)
62 When: January 2007
63 Files: drivers/ieee1394/: oui.db, oui2c.sh
64 Why: big size, little value
65 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
67 ---------------------------
69 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
70 When: December 2006
71 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
72 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
73 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
74 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
75 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
76 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
77 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
78 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
79 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
80 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
82 ---------------------------
84 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
85 When: November 2005
86 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
87 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
88 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
89 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
90 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
91 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
92 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
93 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
94 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
95 pcmciautils package available at
96 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
97 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
99 ---------------------------
101 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
102 When: August 2006
103 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
104 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
105 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
106 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
107 prevents bugs and code duplication
108 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
110 ---------------------------
112 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
113 When: June 2006
114 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
115 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
116 the option should just go away entirely.
117 Who: Arjan van de Ven
119 ---------------------------
121 What: eepro100 network driver
122 When: January 2007
123 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
124 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
126 ---------------------------
128 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
129 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
130 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
131 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
133 ---------------------------
135 What: pci_module_init(driver)
136 When: January 2007
137 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
138 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
140 ---------------------------
142 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
143 When: March 2007
144 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
145 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
146 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
147 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
148 and the timevals are sanitized.
150 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
152 ---------------------------
154 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
155 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
156 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
157 When: before 2.6.19
158 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
159 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
160 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
162 ---------------------------
164 What: mount/umount uevents
165 When: February 2007
166 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
167 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
168 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
169 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
171 ---------------------------
173 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
174 When: February 2008
175 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
176 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
177 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
178 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
179 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
180 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
181 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
182 userspace filesystems, please contact the
183 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
184 there will be glad to help you out.
185 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
187 ---------------------------
189 What: find_trylock_page
190 When: January 2007
191 Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
192 is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
193 that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
194 It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
195 This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
196 cannot cleanly use something else.
197 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
199 ---------------------------
201 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
202 When: Januar 2007
203 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
204 out of the signal namespace.
206 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
208 ---------------------------
210 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
211 When: October 2008
212 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
213 inconsistent.
214 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
215 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
216 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
218 ---------------------------
220 What: i2c-isa
221 When: December 2006
222 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
223 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
224 drivers.
225 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
227 ---------------------------
229 What: IPv4 only connection tracking/NAT/helpers
230 When: 2.6.22
231 Why: The new layer 3 independant connection tracking replaces the old
232 IPv4 only version. After some stabilization of the new code the
233 old one will be removed.
234 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
236 ---------------------------
238 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
239 When: December 2006
240 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
241 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
242 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
243 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
244 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
245 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
246 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
247 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
248 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
249 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
250 going out of sync.
251 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
252 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
253 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
254 date.
256 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
258 ---------------------------