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 ---------------------------
11 Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet
13 Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
15 ---------------------------
17 What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
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)()
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)
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
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
64 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
65 driver can be 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.
73 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
74 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
75 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
76 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
77 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
78 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
79 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
80 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
81 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
82 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
83 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
85 ---------------------------
87 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
89 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
90 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
91 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
92 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
93 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
94 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
95 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
96 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
97 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
98 pcmciautils package available at
99 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
100 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
102 ---------------------------
104 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
106 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
108 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
109 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
110 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
111 prevents bugs and code duplication
112 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
114 ---------------------------
116 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
118 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
119 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
120 the option should just go away entirely.
121 Who: Arjan van de Ven
123 ---------------------------
125 What: eepro100 network driver
127 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
128 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
130 ---------------------------
132 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
133 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
134 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
135 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
137 ---------------------------
139 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
140 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
141 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
143 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
144 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
145 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
147 ---------------------------
149 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
151 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
152 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
153 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
154 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
155 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
156 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
157 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
158 userspace filesystems, please contact the
159 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
160 there will be glad to help you out.
161 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
163 ---------------------------
165 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
167 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
168 out of the signal namespace.
170 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
172 ---------------------------
174 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
176 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
178 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
179 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
180 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
182 ---------------------------
184 What: i2c_adapter.list
186 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
188 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
189 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
191 ---------------------------
193 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
194 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
195 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
196 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
198 ---------------------------
200 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
202 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
203 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
204 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
205 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
206 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
207 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
208 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
209 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
210 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
211 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
213 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
214 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
215 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
218 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
220 ---------------------------
222 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
224 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
225 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
226 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
228 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
229 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
230 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
231 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
232 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
234 ---------------------------
236 What: ACPI procfs interface
238 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
239 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
240 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
242 ---------------------------
244 What: /proc/acpi/button
246 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
248 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
250 ---------------------------
252 What: sk98lin network driver
254 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
255 replaced by the skge driver.
256 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
258 ---------------------------
260 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
262 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
263 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
264 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
265 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
266 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
268 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
269 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
270 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
272 ---------------------------
274 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
276 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
277 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
278 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
279 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
280 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
281 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
282 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
283 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
284 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
285 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
286 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
287 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
288 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
289 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
291 ---------------------------
293 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
295 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
297 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
299 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
300 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
301 execution of the function
302 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
303 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
305 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
307 ---------------------------
309 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
311 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
312 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
313 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
315 ---------------------------
317 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
318 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
319 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
320 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
322 ---------------------------
324 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
326 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
327 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
328 system halt (only synchronized caches).
329 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
330 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
331 spin down support is available.
332 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
333 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
334 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
336 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
337 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
338 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
340 ---------------------------