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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 depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
29 When: January 2006
30 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
31 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
33 ---------------------------
35 What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
36 When: April 2006
37 Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
38 Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
39 vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
40 VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
41 drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
42 are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
43 So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
44 people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
45 of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
46 Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
48 ---------------------------
50 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
51 When: November 2005
52 Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
53 more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
54 access anyway.
55 Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
57 ---------------------------
59 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
60 When: July 2006
61 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
62 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
63 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
64 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
65 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
66 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
67 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
68 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
69 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
70 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
72 ---------------------------
74 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource)
75 When: April 2006
76 Files: kernel/resource.c
77 Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
78 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
80 ---------------------------
82 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
83 When: November 2005
84 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
85 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
86 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
87 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
88 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
89 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
90 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
91 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
92 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
93 pcmciautils package available at
94 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
95 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
97 ---------------------------
99 What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
100 When: December 2005
101 Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
102 "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
103 ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
104 all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
105 to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
106 instead of the current 'libipq'.
107 Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
109 ---------------------------
111 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
112 When: August 2006
113 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
114 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
115 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
116 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
117 prevents bugs and code duplication
118 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
120 ---------------------------
122 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
123 When: June 2006
124 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
125 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
126 the option should just go away entirely.
127 Who: Arjan van de Ven
129 ---------------------------
131 What: START_ARRAY ioctl for md
132 When: July 2006
133 Files: drivers/md/md.c
134 Why: Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed.
135 Alternatives exist
136 Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
138 ---------------------------
140 What: au1x00_uart driver
141 When: January 2006
142 Why: The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences
143 between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange
144 brother on Alchemy SOCs. The loss of features is not considered an
145 issue.
146 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
148 ---------------------------
150 What: eepro100 network driver
151 When: January 2007
152 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
153 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
155 ---------------------------
157 What: pci_module_init(driver)
158 When: January 2007
159 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
160 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
162 ---------------------------
164 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
165 When: March 2007
166 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
167 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
168 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
169 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
170 and the timevals are sanitized.
172 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
174 ---------------------------
176 What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
177 When: January 2007
178 Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
179 probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
180 bug #5889.)
181 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
183 ---------------------------
185 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(tasklist_lock)
186 When: August 2006
187 Files: kernel/fork.c
188 Why: tasklist_lock protects the kernel internal task list. Modules have
189 no business looking at it, and all instances in drivers have been due
190 to use of too-lowlevel APIs. Having this symbol exported prevents
191 moving to more scalable locking schemes for the task list.
192 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
194 ---------------------------
196 What: mount/umount uevents
197 When: February 2007
198 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
199 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
200 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
201 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
203 ---------------------------
205 What: Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards.
206 When: June 2006
207 Why: Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no
208 users have complained indicating there is no more need for these
209 boards. This should really be considered a last call.
210 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
212 ---------------------------
214 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
215 When: Febuary 2008
216 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
217 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
218 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
219 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
220 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
221 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
222 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
223 userspace filesystems, please contact the
224 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
225 there will be glad to help you out.
226 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
228 ---------------------------
230 What: find_trylock_page
231 When: January 2007
232 Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
233 is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
234 that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
235 It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
236 This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
237 cannot cleanly use something else.
238 Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
240 ---------------------------