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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: dev->power.power_state
18 When: July 2007
19 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
20 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
21 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
22 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
23 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
24 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
25 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
26 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
28 ---------------------------
30 What: old NCR53C9x driver
31 When: October 2007
32 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
33 driver can be ported over almost trivially.
34 Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
35 Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
37 ---------------------------
39 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
40 When: December 2008
41 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
42 Check: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
43 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
44 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
45 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
46 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
47 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
48 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
49 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
50 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
51 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
52 Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via
53 v4l1-compat module.
54 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
56 ---------------------------
58 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
59 When: November 2005
60 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
61 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
62 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
63 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
64 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
65 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
66 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
67 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
68 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
69 pcmciautils package available at
70 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
71 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
73 ---------------------------
75 What: sys_sysctl
76 When: September 2010
77 Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL
78 Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from
79 /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be
80 important performance wise.
82 Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel
83 bugs and security issues.
85 When I looked several months ago all I could find after
86 searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and
87 glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall.
89 The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user
90 space programs.
92 sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user
93 space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel.
95 For the last several months the policy has been no new binary
96 sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them.
98 Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so
99 properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a
100 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill
101 them and end the pain.
103 In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with
104 in a piecewise fashion.
106 Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
108 ---------------------------
110 What: a.out interpreter support for ELF executables
111 When: 2.6.25
112 Files: fs/binfmt_elf.c
113 Why: Using a.out interpreters for ELF executables was a feature for
114 transition from a.out to ELF. But now it is unlikely to be still
115 needed anymore and removing it would simplify the hairy ELF
116 loader code.
117 Who: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
119 ---------------------------
121 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
122 When: August 2006
123 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
124 Check: kernel_thread
125 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
126 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
127 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
128 prevents bugs and code duplication
129 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
131 ---------------------------
133 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
134 When: June 2006
135 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
136 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
137 the option should just go away entirely.
138 Who: Arjan van de Ven
140 ---------------------------
142 What: eepro100 network driver
143 When: January 2007
144 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
145 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
147 ---------------------------
149 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
150 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
151 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
152 When: before 2.6.19
153 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
154 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
155 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
157 ---------------------------
159 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
160 When: February 2008
161 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
162 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
163 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
164 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
165 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
166 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
167 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
168 userspace filesystems, please contact the
169 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
170 there will be glad to help you out.
171 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
173 ---------------------------
175 What: vm_ops.nopage
176 When: Soon, provided in-kernel callers have been converted
177 Why: This interface is replaced by vm_ops.fault, but it has been around
178 forever, is used by a lot of drivers, and doesn't cost much to
179 maintain.
180 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
182 ---------------------------
184 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
185 When: September 2007
186 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
187 out of the signal namespace.
189 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
191 ---------------------------
193 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
194 When: October 2008
195 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
196 inconsistent.
197 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
198 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
199 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
201 ---------------------------
203 What: i2c_adapter.list
204 When: July 2007
205 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
206 core.
207 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
208 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
210 ---------------------------
212 What: ACPI procfs interface
213 When: July 2008
214 Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
215 ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
216 there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
217 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
219 ---------------------------
221 What: /proc/acpi/button
222 When: August 2007
223 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
224 since 2.6.20.
225 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
227 ---------------------------
229 What: /proc/acpi/event
230 When: February 2008
231 Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
232 and netlink since 2.6.23.
233 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
235 ---------------------------
237 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
238 When: September 2007
239 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
240 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
241 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
243 ---------------------------
245 What: 'time' kernel boot parameter
246 When: January 2008
247 Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be
248 enabled or disabled as needed
249 Who: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
251 ---------------------------
253 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
254 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
255 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
256 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
258 ---------------------------
260 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
261 When: Dec 2008
262 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
263 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
264 system halt (only synchronized caches).
265 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
266 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
267 spin down support is available.
268 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
269 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
270 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
271 warn about it.
272 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
273 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
274 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
276 ---------------------------
278 What: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
279 When: November 2007
280 Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
281 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
283 ---------------------------
285 What: iptables SAME target
286 When: 1.1. 2008
287 Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
288 Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
289 Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
290 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
292 ---------------------------
294 What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
295 When: Jun 2008
296 Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
297 platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
298 arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
299 tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
300 remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
301 that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
302 interested maintainer.
303 Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
305 ---------------------------
307 What: mthca driver's MSI support
308 When: January 2008
309 Files: drivers/infiniband/hw/mthca/*.[ch]
310 Why: All mthca hardware also supports MSI-X, which provides
311 strictly more functionality than MSI. So there is no point in
312 having both MSI-X and MSI support in the driver.
313 Who: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
315 ---------------------------
317 What: sk98lin network driver
318 When: Feburary 2008
319 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
320 replaced by the skge driver.
321 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
323 ---------------------------
325 What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
326 When: April 2008
328 Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
329 location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
330 scripts, do not break.
331 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
333 ---------------------------
335 What: shaper network driver
336 When: January 2008
337 Files: drivers/net/shaper.c, include/linux/if_shaper.h
338 Why: This driver has been marked obsolete for many years.
339 It was only designed to work on lower speed links and has design
340 flaws that lead to machine crashes. The qdisc infrastructure in
341 2.4 or later kernels, provides richer features and is more robust.
342 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
344 ---------------------------