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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: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
10 When: October 2007
11 Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
12 not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
13 by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
14 in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
15 (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
16 Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
17 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
19 ---------------------------
21 What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
22 dev->power.power_state
23 dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
24 When: July 2007
25 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
26 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
27 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
28 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
29 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
30 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
31 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
32 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
34 ---------------------------
36 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
37 When: December 2005
38 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
39 O_DIRECT can be used instead
40 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
42 ---------------------------
44 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
45 When: June 2007
46 Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
47 Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
48 (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
49 raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
50 Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
52 ---------------------------
54 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
55 When: December 2006
56 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
57 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
58 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
59 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
60 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
61 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
62 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
63 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
64 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
65 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
67 ---------------------------
69 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
70 When: November 2005
71 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
72 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
73 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
74 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
75 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
76 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
77 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
78 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
79 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
80 pcmciautils package available at
81 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
82 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
84 ---------------------------
86 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
87 When: August 2006
88 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
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: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
114 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
115 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
116 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
118 ---------------------------
120 What: pci_module_init(driver)
121 When: January 2007
122 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
123 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
125 ---------------------------
127 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
128 When: March 2007
129 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
130 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
131 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
132 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
133 and the timevals are sanitized.
135 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
137 ---------------------------
139 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
140 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
141 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
142 When: before 2.6.19
143 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
144 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
145 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
147 ---------------------------
149 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
150 When: February 2008
151 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
152 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
153 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
154 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
155 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
156 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
157 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
158 userspace filesystems, please contact the
159 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
160 there will be glad to help you out.
161 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
163 ---------------------------
165 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
166 When: Januar 2007
167 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
168 out of the signal namespace.
170 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
172 ---------------------------
174 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
175 When: October 2008
176 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
177 inconsistent.
178 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
179 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
180 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
182 ---------------------------
184 What: i2c-isa
185 When: December 2006
186 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
187 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
188 drivers.
189 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
191 ---------------------------
193 What: i2c_adapter.dev
194 i2c_adapter.list
195 When: July 2007
196 Why: Superfluous, given i2c_adapter.class_dev:
197 * The "dev" was a stand-in for the physical device node that legacy
198 drivers would not have; but now it's almost always present. Any
199 remaining legacy drivers must upgrade (they now trigger warnings).
200 * The "list" duplicates class device children.
201 The delay in removing this is so upgraded lm_sensors and libsensors
202 can get deployed. (Removal causes minor changes in the sysfs layout,
203 notably the location of the adapter type name and parenting the i2c
204 client hardware directly from their controller.)
205 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
206 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
208 ---------------------------
210 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
211 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
212 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
213 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
215 ---------------------------
217 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
218 When: December 2006
219 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
220 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
221 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
222 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
223 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
224 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
225 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
226 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
227 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
228 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
229 going out of sync.
230 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
231 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
232 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
233 date.
235 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
237 ---------------------------
239 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
240 When: 2.6.21
241 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
242 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
243 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
245 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
246 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
247 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
248 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
249 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
251 ---------------------------
253 What: ACPI procfs interface
254 When: July 2007
255 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
256 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
257 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
259 ---------------------------
261 What: /proc/acpi/button
262 When: August 2007
263 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
264 since 2.6.20.
265 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
267 ---------------------------
269 What: sk98lin network driver
270 When: July 2007
271 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
272 replaced by the skge driver.
273 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
275 ---------------------------
277 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
278 When: Oct 2007
279 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
280 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
281 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
282 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
283 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
284 use tslib by now.
285 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
286 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
287 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
289 ---------------------------
291 What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
292 When: in 2.6.22
293 Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
294 watchdog driver.
295 Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
297 ---------------------------
299 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
300 When: in 2.6.23
301 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
302 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
303 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
304 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
305 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
306 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
307 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
308 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
309 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
310 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
311 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
312 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
313 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
314 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
316 ---------------------------