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)()
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)
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
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)
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)
55 Why: There are no projects known to use these exported symbols.
56 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
58 ---------------------------
60 What: ieee1394's *_oui sysfs attributes (CONFIG_IEEE1394_OUI_DB)
62 Files: drivers/ieee1394/: oui.db, oui2c.sh
63 Why: big size, little value
64 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
66 ---------------------------
68 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
70 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
71 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
72 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
73 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
74 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
75 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
76 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
77 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
78 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
79 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
81 ---------------------------
83 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
85 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
86 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
87 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
88 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
89 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
90 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
91 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
92 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
93 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
94 pcmciautils package available at
95 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
96 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
98 ---------------------------
100 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
102 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
103 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
104 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
105 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
106 prevents bugs and code duplication
107 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
109 ---------------------------
111 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
113 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
114 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
115 the option should just go away entirely.
116 Who: Arjan van de Ven
118 ---------------------------
120 What: eepro100 network driver
122 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
123 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
125 ---------------------------
127 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
128 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
129 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
130 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
132 ---------------------------
134 What: pci_module_init(driver)
136 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
137 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
139 ---------------------------
141 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
143 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
144 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
145 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
146 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
147 and the timevals are sanitized.
149 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
151 ---------------------------
153 What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
155 Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
156 probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
158 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
160 ---------------------------
162 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
163 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
164 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
166 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
167 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
168 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
170 ---------------------------
172 What: mount/umount uevents
174 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
175 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
176 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
177 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
179 ---------------------------
181 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
183 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
184 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
185 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
186 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
187 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
188 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
189 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
190 userspace filesystems, please contact the
191 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
192 there will be glad to help you out.
193 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
195 ---------------------------
197 What: find_trylock_page
199 Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
200 is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
201 that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
202 It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
203 This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
204 cannot cleanly use something else.
205 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
207 ---------------------------
209 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
211 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
212 out of the signal namespace.
214 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
216 ---------------------------
218 What: i2c-ite and i2c-algo-ite drivers
220 Why: These drivers never compiled since they were added to the kernel
221 tree 5 years ago. This feature removal can be reevaluated if
222 someone shows interest in the drivers, fixes them and takes over
224 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-mips&m=115040510817448
225 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
227 ---------------------------
229 What: Bridge netfilter deferred IPv4/IPv6 output hook calling
231 Why: The deferred output hooks are a layering violation causing unusual
232 and broken behaviour on bridge devices. Examples of things they
233 break include QoS classifation using the MARK or CLASSIFY targets,
234 the IPsec policy match and connection tracking with VLANs on a
235 bridge. Their only use is to enable bridge output port filtering
236 within iptables with the physdev match, which can also be done by
237 combining iptables and ebtables using netfilter marks. Until it
238 will get removed the hook deferral is disabled by default and is
239 only enabled when needed.
241 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
243 ---------------------------
245 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
247 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
249 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
250 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
251 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
253 ---------------------------
257 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
258 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
260 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
262 ---------------------------
264 What: IPv4 only connection tracking/NAT/helpers
266 Why: The new layer 3 independant connection tracking replaces the old
267 IPv4 only version. After some stabilization of the new code the
268 old one will be removed.
269 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
271 ---------------------------