| The following is a list of files and features that are going to be |
| removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what |
| exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing |
| the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also |
| be removed from this file. |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: MXSER |
| When: December 2007 |
| Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet |
| and remove it. |
| Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP |
| When: October 2007 |
| Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are |
| not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set |
| by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created |
| in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification |
| (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic. |
| Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and |
| Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: /sys/devices/.../power/state |
| dev->power.power_state |
| dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)() |
| When: July 2007 |
| Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing |
| driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support |
| system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish |
| different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy |
| inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to |
| use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific |
| interfaces either to kernel or to userspace. |
| Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER) |
| When: December 2005 |
| Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3 |
| O_DIRECT can be used instead |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN |
| When: June 2007 |
| Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface. |
| Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394 |
| (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv, |
| raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394. |
| Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: old NCR53C9x driver |
| When: October 2007 |
| Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level |
| driver can be ported over almost trivially. |
| Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> |
| Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices. |
| When: December 2006 |
| Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h |
| Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6 |
| series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough |
| means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is |
| already available on the main drivers and should be used instead. |
| Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle |
| old calls, replacing to newer ones. |
| Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to |
| communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow |
| V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls. |
| Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl]) |
| When: November 2005 |
| Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c |
| Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a |
| normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel |
| infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA |
| control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is |
| unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the |
| PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more |
| difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either |
| handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new |
| pcmciautils package available at |
| http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/ |
| Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) |
| When: August 2006 |
| Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c |
| Funcs: kernel_thread |
| Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should |
| use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from |
| implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that |
| prevents bugs and code duplication |
| Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING |
| When: June 2006 |
| Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january |
| 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not, |
| the option should just go away entirely. |
| Who: Arjan van de Ven |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: eepro100 network driver |
| When: January 2007 |
| Why: replaced by the e100 driver |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER |
| When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22 |
| Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports |
| (temporary transition config option provided until then) |
| The transition config option will also be removed at the same time. |
| When: before 2.6.19 |
| Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary |
| and are often a sign of "wrong API" |
| Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL |
| When: February 2008 |
| Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c |
| Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been |
| possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs |
| that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB |
| subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to |
| register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs |
| any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the |
| userspace filesystems, please contact the |
| linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers |
| there will be glad to help you out. |
| Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Interrupt only SA_* flags |
| When: September 2007 |
| Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them |
| out of the signal namespace. |
| |
| Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment |
| When: October 2008 |
| Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and |
| inconsistent. |
| Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus |
| devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement. |
| Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: i2c-isa |
| When: December 2006 |
| Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver |
| model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform |
| drivers. |
| Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: i2c_adapter.list |
| When: July 2007 |
| Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver |
| core. |
| Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>, |
| David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS |
| When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24 |
| Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver |
| When: December 2006 |
| Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are |
| functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only |
| difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions. |
| One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of |
| speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq. |
| That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep |
| capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of |
| speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on |
| non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and |
| less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers |
| going out of sync. |
| Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to |
| switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue |
| to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this |
| date. |
| |
| Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace |
| When: 2.6.21 |
| Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for |
| the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary |
| and have no place being exposed to user-space. |
| |
| For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace, |
| the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump |
| and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here: |
| http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils |
| Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: ACPI procfs interface |
| When: July 2007 |
| Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated |
| in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed. |
| Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: /proc/acpi/button |
| When: August 2007 |
| Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer |
| since 2.6.20. |
| Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: sk98lin network driver |
| When: July 2007 |
| Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver |
| replaced by the skge driver. |
| Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation |
| When: Oct 2007 |
| Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c |
| Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001. |
| tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and |
| much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no |
| longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to |
| use tslib by now. |
| The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have |
| it loaded when they don't need/use it. |
| Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4 |
| When: in 2.6.23 |
| Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving |
| us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have |
| been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's |
| implementation are blocking more critical core networking |
| development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution |
| enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs |
| (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be |
| handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling |
| errors impossible too because they get called after we've |
| totally commited to creating a route object, for example). |
| This problem has existed for years and no forward progress |
| has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage |
| this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it. |
| Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer) |
| When: December 2007 |
| Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several |
| problems: |
| - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's |
| interrupt handler |
| - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery |
| - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during |
| execution of the function |
| Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read |
| configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling |
| themselves. |
| Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers |
| When: September 2007 |
| Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific |
| I2C-over-GPIO drivers. |
| Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE |
| When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25 |
| Why: obsolete OSS drivers |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: libata spindown skipping and warning |
| When: Dec 2008 |
| Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin |
| down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on |
| system halt (only synchronized caches). |
| Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node |
| /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if |
| spin down support is available. |
| Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk |
| makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks |
| device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and |
| warn about it. |
| This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will |
| be removed after userspace is reasonably updated. |
| Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
