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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: MXSER
10 When: December 2007
11 Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet
12 and remove it.
13 Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
15 ---------------------------
17 What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
18 When: October 2007
19 Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
20 not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
21 by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
22 in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
23 (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
24 Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
25 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
27 ---------------------------
29 What: dev->power.power_state
30 When: July 2007
31 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
32 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
33 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
34 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
35 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
36 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
37 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
38 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
40 ---------------------------
42 What: old NCR53C9x driver
43 When: October 2007
44 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
45 driver can be ported over almost trivially.
46 Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
47 Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
49 ---------------------------
51 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
52 When: December 2006
53 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
54 Check: include/linux/video_decoder.h
55 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
56 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
57 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
58 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
59 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
60 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
61 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
62 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
63 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
64 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
66 ---------------------------
68 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
69 When: November 2005
70 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
71 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
72 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
73 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
74 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
75 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
76 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
77 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
78 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
79 pcmciautils package available at
80 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
81 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
83 ---------------------------
85 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
86 When: August 2006
87 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
88 Check: kernel_thread
89 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
90 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
91 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
92 prevents bugs and code duplication
93 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
95 ---------------------------
97 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
98 When: June 2006
99 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
100 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
101 the option should just go away entirely.
102 Who: Arjan van de Ven
104 ---------------------------
106 What: eepro100 network driver
107 When: January 2007
108 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
109 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
111 ---------------------------
113 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
114 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
115 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
116 When: before 2.6.19
117 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
118 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
119 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
121 ---------------------------
123 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
124 When: February 2008
125 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
126 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
127 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
128 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
129 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
130 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
131 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
132 userspace filesystems, please contact the
133 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
134 there will be glad to help you out.
135 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
137 ---------------------------
139 What: vm_ops.nopage
140 When: Soon, provided in-kernel callers have been converted
141 Why: This interface is replaced by vm_ops.fault, but it has been around
142 forever, is used by a lot of drivers, and doesn't cost much to
143 maintain.
144 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
146 ---------------------------
148 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
149 When: September 2007
150 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
151 out of the signal namespace.
153 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
155 ---------------------------
157 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
158 When: October 2008
159 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
160 inconsistent.
161 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
162 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
163 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
165 ---------------------------
167 What: i2c_adapter.list
168 When: July 2007
169 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
170 core.
171 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
172 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
174 ---------------------------
176 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
177 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
178 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
179 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
181 ---------------------------
183 What: ACPI procfs interface
184 When: July 2008
185 Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
186 ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
187 there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
188 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
190 ---------------------------
192 What: /proc/acpi/button
193 When: August 2007
194 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
195 since 2.6.20.
196 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
198 ---------------------------
200 What: /proc/acpi/event
201 When: February 2008
202 Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
203 and netlink since 2.6.23.
204 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
206 ---------------------------
208 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
209 When: Oct 2007
210 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
211 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
212 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
213 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
214 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
215 use tslib by now.
216 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
217 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
218 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
220 ---------------------------
222 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
223 When: September 2007
224 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
225 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
226 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
228 ---------------------------
230 What: 'time' kernel boot parameter
231 When: January 2008
232 Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be
233 enabled or disabled as needed
234 Who: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
236 ---------------------------
238 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
239 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
240 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
241 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
243 ---------------------------
245 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
246 When: Dec 2008
247 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
248 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
249 system halt (only synchronized caches).
250 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
251 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
252 spin down support is available.
253 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
254 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
255 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
256 warn about it.
257 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
258 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
259 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
261 ---------------------------
263 What: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
264 When: November 2007
265 Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
266 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
268 ---------------------------
270 What: iptables SAME target
271 When: 1.1. 2008
272 Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
273 Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
274 Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
275 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
277 ---------------------------
279 What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
280 When: Jun 2008
281 Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
282 platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
283 arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
284 tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
285 remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
286 that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
287 interested maintainer.
288 Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
290 ---------------------------
292 What: mthca driver's MSI support
293 When: January 2008
294 Files: drivers/infiniband/hw/mthca/*.[ch]
295 Why: All mthca hardware also supports MSI-X, which provides
296 strictly more functionality than MSI. So there is no point in
297 having both MSI-X and MSI support in the driver.
298 Who: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
300 ---------------------------
302 What: sk98lin network driver
303 When: Feburary 2008
304 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
305 replaced by the skge driver.
306 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
308 ---------------------------
310 What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
311 When: April 2008
313 Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
314 location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
315 scripts, do not break.
316 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
318 ---------------------------
320 What: shaper network driver
321 When: January 2008
322 Files: drivers/net/shaper.c, include/linux/if_shaper.h
323 Why: This driver has been marked obsolete for many years.
324 It was only designed to work on lower speed links and has design
325 flaws that lead to machine crashes. The qdisc infrastructure in
326 2.4 or later kernels, provides richer features and is more robust.
327 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
329 ---------------------------