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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 Funcs: kernel_thread
108 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
109 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
110 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
111 prevents bugs and code duplication
112 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
114 ---------------------------
116 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
117 When: June 2006
118 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
119 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
120 the option should just go away entirely.
121 Who: Arjan van de Ven
123 ---------------------------
125 What: eepro100 network driver
126 When: January 2007
127 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
128 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
130 ---------------------------
132 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
133 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
134 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
135 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.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: September 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.list
194 When: July 2007
195 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
196 core.
197 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
198 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
200 ---------------------------
202 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
203 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
204 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
205 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
207 ---------------------------
209 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
210 When: December 2006
211 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
212 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
213 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
214 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
215 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
216 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
217 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
218 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
219 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
220 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
221 going out of sync.
222 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
223 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
224 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
225 date.
227 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
229 ---------------------------
231 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
232 When: 2.6.21
233 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
234 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
235 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
237 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
238 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
239 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
240 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
241 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
243 ---------------------------
245 What: ACPI procfs interface
246 When: July 2007
247 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
248 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
249 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
251 ---------------------------
253 What: /proc/acpi/button
254 When: August 2007
255 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
256 since 2.6.20.
257 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
259 ---------------------------
261 What: sk98lin network driver
262 When: July 2007
263 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
264 replaced by the skge driver.
265 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
267 ---------------------------
269 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
270 When: Oct 2007
271 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
272 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
273 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
274 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
275 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
276 use tslib by now.
277 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
278 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
279 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
281 ---------------------------
283 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
284 When: in 2.6.23
285 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
286 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
287 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
288 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
289 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
290 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
291 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
292 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
293 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
294 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
295 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
296 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
297 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
298 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
300 ---------------------------
302 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
303 When: December 2007
304 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
305 problems:
306 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
307 interrupt handler
308 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
309 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
310 execution of the function
311 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
312 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
313 themselves.
314 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
316 ---------------------------
318 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
319 When: September 2007
320 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
321 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
322 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
324 ---------------------------
326 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
327 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
328 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
329 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
331 ---------------------------
333 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
334 When: Dec 2008
335 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
336 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
337 system halt (only synchronized caches).
338 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
339 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
340 spin down support is available.
341 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
342 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
343 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
344 warn about it.
345 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
346 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
347 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
349 ---------------------------