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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: devfs
10 When: July 2005
11 Files: fs/devfs/*, include/linux/devfs_fs*.h and assorted devfs
12 function calls throughout the kernel tree
13 Why: It has been unmaintained for a number of years, has unfixable
14 races, contains a naming policy within the kernel that is
15 against the LSB, and can be replaced by using udev.
16 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
18 ---------------------------
20 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
21 When: December 2005
22 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
23 O_DIRECT can be used instead
24 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
26 ---------------------------
28 What: drivers that were depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
29 (config options already removed)
30 When: before 2.6.19
31 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
32 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
34 ---------------------------
36 What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
37 When: April 2006
38 Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
39 Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
40 vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
41 VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
42 drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
43 are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
44 So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
45 people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
46 of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
47 Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
49 ---------------------------
51 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
52 When: November 2005
53 Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
54 more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
55 access anyway.
56 Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
58 ---------------------------
60 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
61 When: July 2006
62 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
63 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
64 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
65 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
66 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
67 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
68 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
69 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
70 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
71 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
73 ---------------------------
75 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource)
76 When: April 2006
77 Files: kernel/resource.c
78 Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
79 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
81 ---------------------------
83 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
84 When: November 2005
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: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
101 When: December 2005
102 Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
103 "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
104 ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
105 all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
106 to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
107 instead of the current 'libipq'.
108 Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
110 ---------------------------
112 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
113 When: August 2006
114 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
115 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
116 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
117 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
118 prevents bugs and code duplication
119 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
121 ---------------------------
123 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
124 When: June 2006
125 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
126 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
127 the option should just go away entirely.
128 Who: Arjan van de Ven
130 ---------------------------
132 What: START_ARRAY ioctl for md
133 When: July 2006
134 Files: drivers/md/md.c
135 Why: Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed.
136 Alternatives exist
137 Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
139 ---------------------------
141 What: au1x00_uart driver
142 When: January 2006
143 Why: The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences
144 between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange
145 brother on Alchemy SOCs. The loss of features is not considered an
146 issue.
147 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
149 ---------------------------
151 What: eepro100 network driver
152 When: January 2007
153 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
154 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
156 ---------------------------
158 What: pci_module_init(driver)
159 When: January 2007
160 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
161 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
163 ---------------------------
165 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
166 When: March 2007
167 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
168 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
169 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
170 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
171 and the timevals are sanitized.
173 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
175 ---------------------------
177 What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
178 When: January 2007
179 Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
180 probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
181 bug #5889.)
182 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
184 ---------------------------
186 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(tasklist_lock)
187 When: August 2006
188 Files: kernel/fork.c
189 Why: tasklist_lock protects the kernel internal task list. Modules have
190 no business looking at it, and all instances in drivers have been due
191 to use of too-lowlevel APIs. Having this symbol exported prevents
192 moving to more scalable locking schemes for the task list.
193 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
195 ---------------------------
197 What: mount/umount uevents
198 When: February 2007
199 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
200 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
201 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
202 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
204 ---------------------------
206 What: Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards.
207 When: June 2006
208 Why: Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no
209 users have complained indicating there is no more need for these
210 boards. This should really be considered a last call.
211 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
213 ---------------------------
215 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
216 When: Febuary 2008
217 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
218 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
219 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
220 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
221 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
222 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
223 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
224 userspace filesystems, please contact the
225 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
226 there will be glad to help you out.
227 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
229 ---------------------------
231 What: find_trylock_page
232 When: January 2007
233 Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
234 is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
235 that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
236 It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
237 This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
238 cannot cleanly use something else.
239 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
241 ---------------------------