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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: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
18 When: October 2007
19 Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
20 not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
21 by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
22 in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
23 (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
24 Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
25 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
27 ---------------------------
29 What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
30 dev->power.power_state
31 dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
32 When: July 2007
33 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
34 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
35 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
36 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
37 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
38 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
39 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
40 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
42 ---------------------------
44 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
45 When: December 2005
46 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
47 O_DIRECT can be used instead
48 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
50 ---------------------------
52 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
53 When: June 2007
54 Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
55 Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
56 (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
57 raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
58 Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
60 ---------------------------
62 What: old NCR53C9x driver
63 When: October 2007
64 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
65 driver can be ported over almost trivially.
66 Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
67 Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
69 ---------------------------
71 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
72 When: December 2006
73 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
74 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
75 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
76 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
77 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
78 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
79 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
80 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
81 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
82 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
83 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
85 ---------------------------
87 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
88 When: November 2005
89 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
90 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
91 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
92 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
93 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
94 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
95 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
96 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
97 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
98 pcmciautils package available at
99 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
100 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
102 ---------------------------
104 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
105 When: August 2006
106 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
107 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
108 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
109 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
110 prevents bugs and code duplication
111 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
113 ---------------------------
115 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
116 When: June 2006
117 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
118 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
119 the option should just go away entirely.
120 Who: Arjan van de Ven
122 ---------------------------
124 What: eepro100 network driver
125 When: January 2007
126 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
127 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
129 ---------------------------
131 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
132 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
133 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
134 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
136 ---------------------------
138 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
139 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
140 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
141 When: before 2.6.19
142 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
143 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
144 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
146 ---------------------------
148 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
149 When: February 2008
150 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
151 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
152 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
153 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
154 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
155 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
156 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
157 userspace filesystems, please contact the
158 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
159 there will be glad to help you out.
160 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
162 ---------------------------
164 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
165 When: September 2007
166 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
167 out of the signal namespace.
169 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
171 ---------------------------
173 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
174 When: October 2008
175 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
176 inconsistent.
177 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
178 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
179 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
181 ---------------------------
183 What: i2c-isa
184 When: December 2006
185 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
186 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
187 drivers.
188 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
190 ---------------------------
192 What: i2c_adapter.list
193 When: July 2007
194 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
195 core.
196 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
197 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
199 ---------------------------
201 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
202 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
203 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
204 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
206 ---------------------------
208 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
209 When: December 2006
210 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
211 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
212 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
213 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
214 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
215 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
216 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
217 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
218 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
219 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
220 going out of sync.
221 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
222 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
223 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
224 date.
226 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
228 ---------------------------
230 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
231 When: 2.6.21
232 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
233 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
234 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
236 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
237 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
238 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
239 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
240 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
242 ---------------------------
244 What: ACPI procfs interface
245 When: July 2007
246 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
247 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
248 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
250 ---------------------------
252 What: /proc/acpi/button
253 When: August 2007
254 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
255 since 2.6.20.
256 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
258 ---------------------------
260 What: sk98lin network driver
261 When: July 2007
262 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
263 replaced by the skge driver.
264 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
266 ---------------------------
268 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
269 When: Oct 2007
270 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
271 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
272 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
273 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
274 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
275 use tslib by now.
276 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
277 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
278 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
280 ---------------------------
282 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
283 When: in 2.6.23
284 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
285 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
286 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
287 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
288 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
289 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
290 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
291 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
292 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
293 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
294 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
295 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
296 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
297 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
299 ---------------------------
301 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
302 When: December 2007
303 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
304 problems:
305 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
306 interrupt handler
307 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
308 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
309 execution of the function
310 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
311 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
312 themselves.
313 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
315 ---------------------------
317 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
318 When: September 2007
319 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
320 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
321 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
323 ---------------------------
325 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
326 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
327 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
328 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
330 ---------------------------
332 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
333 When: Dec 2008
334 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
335 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
336 system halt (only synchronized caches).
337 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
338 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
339 spin down support is available.
340 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
341 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
342 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
343 warn about it.
344 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
345 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
346 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
348 ---------------------------