| blob | 031029e89fd9c21970189094715ae872c6efb02e |
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)()
12 When: July 2007
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)
25 When: December 2005
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
33 When: June 2007
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)
43 When: June 2007
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)
54 When: January 2007
55 Why: There are no projects known to use these exported symbols, except
56 dfg1394 (uses one symbol whose functionality is core-internal now).
57 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
59 ---------------------------
61 What: ieee1394's *_oui sysfs attributes (CONFIG_IEEE1394_OUI_DB)
62 When: January 2007
63 Files: drivers/ieee1394/: oui.db, oui2c.sh
64 Why: big size, little value
65 Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
67 ---------------------------
69 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
70 When: December 2006
71 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
72 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
73 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
74 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
75 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
76 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
77 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
78 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
79 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
80 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
82 ---------------------------
84 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
85 When: November 2005
86 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
87 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
88 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
89 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
90 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
91 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
92 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
93 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
94 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
95 pcmciautils package available at
96 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
97 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
99 ---------------------------
101 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
102 When: August 2006
103 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
104 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
105 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
106 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
107 prevents bugs and code duplication
108 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
110 ---------------------------
112 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
113 When: June 2006
114 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
115 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
116 the option should just go away entirely.
117 Who: Arjan van de Ven
119 ---------------------------
121 What: eepro100 network driver
122 When: January 2007
123 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
124 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
126 ---------------------------
128 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
129 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
130 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
131 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
133 ---------------------------
135 What: pci_module_init(driver)
136 When: January 2007
137 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
138 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
140 ---------------------------
142 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
143 When: March 2007
144 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
145 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
146 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
147 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
148 and the timevals are sanitized.
150 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
152 ---------------------------
154 What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
155 When: January 2007
156 Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
157 probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
158 bug #5889.)
159 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
161 ---------------------------
163 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
164 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
165 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
166 When: before 2.6.19
167 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
168 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
169 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
171 ---------------------------
173 What: mount/umount uevents
174 When: February 2007
175 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
176 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
177 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
178 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
180 ---------------------------
182 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
183 When: February 2008
184 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
185 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
186 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
187 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
188 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
189 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
190 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
191 userspace filesystems, please contact the
192 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
193 there will be glad to help you out.
194 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
196 ---------------------------
198 What: find_trylock_page
199 When: January 2007
200 Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
201 is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
202 that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
203 It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
204 This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
205 cannot cleanly use something else.
206 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
208 ---------------------------
210 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
211 When: Januar 2007
212 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
213 out of the signal namespace.
215 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
217 ---------------------------
219 What: Bridge netfilter deferred IPv4/IPv6 output hook calling
220 When: January 2007
221 Why: The deferred output hooks are a layering violation causing unusual
222 and broken behaviour on bridge devices. Examples of things they
223 break include QoS classifation using the MARK or CLASSIFY targets,
224 the IPsec policy match and connection tracking with VLANs on a
225 bridge. Their only use is to enable bridge output port filtering
226 within iptables with the physdev match, which can also be done by
227 combining iptables and ebtables using netfilter marks. Until it
228 will get removed the hook deferral is disabled by default and is
229 only enabled when needed.
231 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
233 ---------------------------
235 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
236 When: October 2008
237 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
238 inconsistent.
239 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
240 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
241 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
243 ---------------------------
245 What: i2c-isa
246 When: December 2006
247 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
248 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
249 drivers.
250 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
252 ---------------------------
254 What: IPv4 only connection tracking/NAT/helpers
255 When: 2.6.22
256 Why: The new layer 3 independant connection tracking replaces the old
257 IPv4 only version. After some stabilization of the new code the
258 old one will be removed.
259 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
261 ---------------------------