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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: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
184 When: 2.6.21
185 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
186 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
187 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
189 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
190 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
191 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
192 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
193 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
195 ---------------------------
197 What: ACPI procfs interface
198 When: July 2007
199 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
200 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
201 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
203 ---------------------------
205 What: /proc/acpi/button
206 When: August 2007
207 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
208 since 2.6.20.
209 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
211 ---------------------------
213 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
214 When: Oct 2007
215 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
216 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
217 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
218 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
219 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
220 use tslib by now.
221 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
222 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
223 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
225 ---------------------------
227 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
228 When: December 2007
229 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
230 problems:
231 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
232 interrupt handler
233 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
234 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
235 execution of the function
236 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
237 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
238 themselves.
239 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
241 ---------------------------
243 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
244 When: September 2007
245 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
246 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
247 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
249 ---------------------------
251 What: 'time' kernel boot parameter
252 When: January 2008
253 Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be
254 enabled or disabled as needed
255 Who: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
257 ---------------------------
259 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
260 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
261 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
262 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
264 ---------------------------
266 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
267 When: Dec 2008
268 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
269 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
270 system halt (only synchronized caches).
271 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
272 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
273 spin down support is available.
274 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
275 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
276 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
277 warn about it.
278 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
279 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
280 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
282 ---------------------------
284 What: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
285 When: November 2007
286 Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
287 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
289 ---------------------------
291 What: iptables SAME target
292 When: 1.1. 2008
293 Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
294 Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
295 Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
296 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
298 ---------------------------
300 What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
301 When: Jun 2008
302 Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
303 platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
304 arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
305 tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
306 remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
307 that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
308 interested maintainer.
309 Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
311 ---------------------------
313 What: mthca driver's MSI support
314 When: January 2008
315 Files: drivers/infiniband/hw/mthca/*.[ch]
316 Why: All mthca hardware also supports MSI-X, which provides
317 strictly more functionality than MSI. So there is no point in
318 having both MSI-X and MSI support in the driver.
319 Who: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
321 ---------------------------