| 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: dev->power.power_state |
| 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: 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 2008 |
| Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h |
| Check: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.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. |
| Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via |
| v4l1-compat module. |
| Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| 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: sys_sysctl |
| When: September 2010 |
| Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL |
| Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from |
| /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be |
| important performance wise. |
| |
| Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel |
| bugs and security issues. |
| |
| When I looked several months ago all I could find after |
| searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and |
| glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall. |
| |
| The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user |
| space programs. |
| |
| sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user |
| space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel. |
| |
| For the last several months the policy has been no new binary |
| sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them. |
| |
| Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so |
| properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a |
| 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill |
| them and end the pain. |
| |
| In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with |
| in a piecewise fashion. |
| |
| Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: a.out interpreter support for ELF executables |
| When: 2.6.25 |
| Files: fs/binfmt_elf.c |
| Why: Using a.out interpreters for ELF executables was a feature for |
| transition from a.out to ELF. But now it is unlikely to be still |
| needed anymore and removing it would simplify the hairy ELF |
| loader code. |
| Who: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) |
| When: August 2006 |
| Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c |
| Check: 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: 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: vm_ops.nopage |
| When: Soon, provided in-kernel callers have been converted |
| Why: This interface is replaced by vm_ops.fault, but it has been around |
| forever, is used by a lot of drivers, and doesn't cost much to |
| maintain. |
| Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.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: ACPI procfs interface |
| When: July 2008 |
| Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008. |
| ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that |
| there is enough time for the user space to catch up. |
| 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: /proc/acpi/event |
| When: February 2008 |
| Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer |
| and netlink since 2.6.23. |
| Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: 'time' kernel boot parameter |
| When: January 2008 |
| Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be |
| enabled or disabled as needed |
| Who: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| 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> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories |
| When: Jun 2008 |
| Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64 |
| platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining |
| arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc |
| tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will |
| remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms |
| that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an |
| interested maintainer. |
| Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: sk98lin network driver |
| When: Feburary 2008 |
| Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver |
| replaced by the skge driver. |
| Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks |
| When: April 2008 |
| |
| Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage |
| location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package |
| scripts, do not break. |
| Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: shaper network driver |
| When: January 2008 |
| Files: drivers/net/shaper.c, include/linux/if_shaper.h |
| Why: This driver has been marked obsolete for many years. |
| It was only designed to work on lower speed links and has design |
| flaws that lead to machine crashes. The qdisc infrastructure in |
| 2.4 or later kernels, provides richer features and is more robust. |
| Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: i2c-i810, i2c-prosavage and i2c-savage4 |
| When: May 2008 |
| Why: These drivers are superseded by i810fb, intelfb and savagefb. |
| Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: bcm43xx wireless network driver |
| When: 2.6.26 |
| Files: drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx |
| Why: This driver's functionality has been replaced by the |
| mac80211-based b43 and b43legacy drivers. |
| Who: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: ieee80211 softmac wireless networking component |
| When: 2.6.26 (or after removal of bcm43xx and port of zd1211rw to mac80211) |
| Files: net/ieee80211/softmac |
| Why: No in-kernel drivers will depend on it any longer. |
| Who: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: rc80211-simple rate control algorithm for mac80211 |
| When: 2.6.26 |
| Files: net/mac80211/rc80211-simple.c |
| Why: This algorithm was provided for reference but always exhibited bad |
| responsiveness and performance and has some serious flaws. It has been |
| replaced by rc80211-pid. |
| Who: Stefano Brivio <stefano.brivio@polimi.it> |
