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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 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 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
74 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
75 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
76 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
77 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
78 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
79 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
80 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
81 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
82 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
84 ---------------------------
86 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
87 When: November 2005
88 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
89 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
90 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
91 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
92 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
93 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
94 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
95 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
96 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
97 pcmciautils package available at
98 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
99 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
101 ---------------------------
103 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
104 When: August 2006
105 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
106 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
107 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
108 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
109 prevents bugs and code duplication
110 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
112 ---------------------------
114 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
115 When: June 2006
116 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
117 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
118 the option should just go away entirely.
119 Who: Arjan van de Ven
121 ---------------------------
123 What: eepro100 network driver
124 When: January 2007
125 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
126 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
128 ---------------------------
130 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
131 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
132 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
133 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
135 ---------------------------
137 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
138 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
139 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
140 When: before 2.6.19
141 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
142 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
143 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
145 ---------------------------
147 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
148 When: February 2008
149 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
150 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
151 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
152 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
153 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
154 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
155 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
156 userspace filesystems, please contact the
157 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
158 there will be glad to help you out.
159 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
161 ---------------------------
163 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
164 When: September 2007
165 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
166 out of the signal namespace.
168 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
170 ---------------------------
172 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
173 When: October 2008
174 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
175 inconsistent.
176 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
177 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
178 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
180 ---------------------------
182 What: i2c-isa
183 When: December 2006
184 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
185 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
186 drivers.
187 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
189 ---------------------------
191 What: i2c_adapter.list
192 When: July 2007
193 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
194 core.
195 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
196 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
198 ---------------------------
200 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
201 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
202 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
203 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
205 ---------------------------
207 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
208 When: December 2006
209 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
210 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
211 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
212 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
213 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
214 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
215 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
216 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
217 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
218 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
219 going out of sync.
220 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
221 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
222 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
223 date.
225 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
227 ---------------------------
229 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
230 When: 2.6.21
231 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
232 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
233 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
235 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
236 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
237 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
238 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
239 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
241 ---------------------------
243 What: ACPI procfs interface
244 When: July 2007
245 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
246 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
247 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
249 ---------------------------
251 What: /proc/acpi/button
252 When: August 2007
253 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
254 since 2.6.20.
255 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
257 ---------------------------
259 What: sk98lin network driver
260 When: July 2007
261 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
262 replaced by the skge driver.
263 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
265 ---------------------------
267 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
268 When: Oct 2007
269 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
270 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
271 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
272 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
273 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
274 use tslib by now.
275 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
276 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
277 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
279 ---------------------------
281 What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
282 When: in 2.6.22
283 Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
284 watchdog driver.
285 Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
287 ---------------------------
289 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
290 When: in 2.6.23
291 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
292 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
293 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
294 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
295 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
296 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
297 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
298 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
299 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
300 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
301 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
302 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
303 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
304 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
306 ---------------------------
308 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
309 When: December 2007
310 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
311 problems:
312 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
313 interrupt handler
314 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
315 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
316 execution of the function
317 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
318 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
319 themselves.
320 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
322 ---------------------------
324 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
325 When: September 2007
326 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
327 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
328 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
330 ---------------------------
332 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
333 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
334 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
335 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
337 ---------------------------