| 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: devfs |
| When: July 2005 |
| Files: fs/devfs/*, include/linux/devfs_fs*.h and assorted devfs |
| function calls throughout the kernel tree |
| Why: It has been unmaintained for a number of years, has unfixable |
| races, contains a naming policy within the kernel that is |
| against the LSB, and can be replaced by using udev. |
| Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| 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: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER |
| When: January 2006 |
| Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL |
| When: April 2006 |
| Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c |
| Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even |
| vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx, |
| VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary |
| drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two |
| are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes. |
| So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow |
| people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware |
| of, to adjust to this upcoming change. |
| Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN |
| When: November 2005 |
| Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is |
| more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394 |
| access anyway. |
| Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices. |
| When: July 2006 |
| 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: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource) |
| When: April 2006 |
| Files: kernel/resource.c |
| Why: No modular usage in the kernel. |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| 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: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue) |
| When: December 2005 |
| Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent |
| "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old |
| ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle |
| all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have |
| to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue |
| instead of the current 'libipq'. |
| Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) |
| When: August 2006 |
| Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c |
| 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: START_ARRAY ioctl for md |
| When: July 2006 |
| Files: drivers/md/md.c |
| Why: Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed. |
| Alternatives exist |
| Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: au1x00_uart driver |
| When: January 2006 |
| Why: The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences |
| between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange |
| brother on Alchemy SOCs. The loss of features is not considered an |
| issue. |
| Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: eepro100 network driver |
| When: January 2007 |
| Why: replaced by the e100 driver |
| Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: pci_module_init(driver) |
| When: January 2007 |
| Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver). |
| Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer |
| When: March 2007 |
| Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This |
| was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were |
| silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals. |
| Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed |
| and the timevals are sanitized. |
| |
| Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: I2C interface of the it87 driver |
| When: January 2007 |
| Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C |
| probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see |
| bug #5889.) |
| Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(tasklist_lock) |
| When: August 2006 |
| Files: kernel/fork.c |
| Why: tasklist_lock protects the kernel internal task list. Modules have |
| no business looking at it, and all instances in drivers have been due |
| to use of too-lowlevel APIs. Having this symbol exported prevents |
| moving to more scalable locking schemes for the task list. |
| Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: mount/umount uevents |
| When: February 2007 |
| Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know |
| when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should |
| poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly. |
| Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards. |
| When: June 2006 |
| Why: Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no |
| users have complained indicating there is no more need for these |
| boards. This should really be considered a last call. |
| Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL |
| When: Febuary 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: find_trylock_page |
| When: January 2007 |
| Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It |
| is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in |
| that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock. |
| It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible. |
| This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface |
| cannot cleanly use something else. |
| Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de> |
| |
| --------------------------- |
