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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: old NCR53C9x driver
45 When: October 2007
46 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
47 driver can be ported over almost trivially.
48 Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
49 Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
51 ---------------------------
53 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
54 When: December 2006
55 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
56 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
57 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
58 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
59 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
60 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
61 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
62 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
63 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
64 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
65 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
67 ---------------------------
69 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
70 When: November 2005
71 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
72 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
73 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
74 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
75 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
76 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
77 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
78 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
79 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
80 pcmciautils package available at
81 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
82 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
84 ---------------------------
86 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
87 When: August 2006
88 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
89 Funcs: kernel_thread
90 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
91 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
92 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
93 prevents bugs and code duplication
94 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
96 ---------------------------
98 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
99 When: June 2006
100 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
101 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
102 the option should just go away entirely.
103 Who: Arjan van de Ven
105 ---------------------------
107 What: eepro100 network driver
108 When: January 2007
109 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
110 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
112 ---------------------------
114 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
115 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
116 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
117 When: before 2.6.19
118 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
119 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
120 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
122 ---------------------------
124 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
125 When: February 2008
126 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
127 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
128 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
129 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
130 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
131 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
132 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
133 userspace filesystems, please contact the
134 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
135 there will be glad to help you out.
136 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
138 ---------------------------
140 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
141 When: September 2007
142 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
143 out of the signal namespace.
145 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
147 ---------------------------
149 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
150 When: October 2008
151 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
152 inconsistent.
153 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
154 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
155 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
157 ---------------------------
159 What: i2c-isa
160 When: December 2006
161 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
162 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
163 drivers.
164 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
166 ---------------------------
168 What: i2c_adapter.list
169 When: July 2007
170 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
171 core.
172 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
173 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
175 ---------------------------
177 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
178 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
179 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
180 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
182 ---------------------------
184 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
185 When: 2.6.21
186 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
187 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
188 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
190 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
191 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
192 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
193 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
194 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
196 ---------------------------
198 What: ACPI procfs interface
199 When: July 2007
200 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
201 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
202 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
204 ---------------------------
206 What: /proc/acpi/button
207 When: August 2007
208 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
209 since 2.6.20.
210 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
212 ---------------------------
214 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
215 When: Oct 2007
216 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
217 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
218 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
219 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
220 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
221 use tslib by now.
222 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
223 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
224 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
226 ---------------------------
228 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
229 When: December 2007
230 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
231 problems:
232 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
233 interrupt handler
234 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
235 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
236 execution of the function
237 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
238 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
239 themselves.
240 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
242 ---------------------------
244 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
245 When: September 2007
246 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
247 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
248 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
250 ---------------------------
252 What: 'time' kernel boot parameter
253 When: January 2008
254 Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be
255 enabled or disabled as needed
256 Who: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
258 ---------------------------
260 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
261 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
262 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
263 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
265 ---------------------------
267 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
268 When: Dec 2008
269 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
270 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
271 system halt (only synchronized caches).
272 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
273 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
274 spin down support is available.
275 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
276 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
277 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
278 warn about it.
279 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
280 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
281 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
283 ---------------------------
285 What: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
286 When: November 2007
287 Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
288 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
290 ---------------------------
292 What: iptables SAME target
293 When: 1.1. 2008
294 Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
295 Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
296 Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
297 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
299 ---------------------------
301 What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
302 When: Jun 2008
303 Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
304 platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
305 arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
306 tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
307 remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
308 that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
309 interested maintainer.
310 Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
312 ---------------------------