blob: fa75220f8d34e602d166cecfffe0a7036fc2cb64 [file] [log] [blame]
Linus Torvalds1da177e2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07001The following is a list of files and features that are going to be
2removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what
3exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing
4the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also
5be removed from this file.
6
7---------------------------
8
Luis R. Rodriguez4d8cd262009-09-08 12:09:47 -07009What: PRISM54
10When: 2.6.34
11
12Why: prism54 FullMAC PCI / Cardbus devices used to be supported only by the
13 prism54 wireless driver. After Intersil stopped selling these
14 devices in preference for the newer more flexible SoftMAC devices
15 a SoftMAC device driver was required and prism54 did not support
16 them. The p54pci driver now exists and has been present in the kernel for
17 a while. This driver supports both SoftMAC devices and FullMAC devices.
18 The main difference between these devices was the amount of memory which
19 could be used for the firmware. The SoftMAC devices support a smaller
20 amount of memory. Because of this the SoftMAC firmware fits into FullMAC
21 devices's memory. p54pci supports not only PCI / Cardbus but also USB
22 and SPI. Since p54pci supports all devices prism54 supports
23 you will have a conflict. I'm not quite sure how distributions are
24 handling this conflict right now. prism54 was kept around due to
25 claims users may experience issues when using the SoftMAC driver.
26 Time has passed users have not reported issues. If you use prism54
27 and for whatever reason you cannot use p54pci please let us know!
28 E-mail us at: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
29
30 For more information see the p54 wiki page:
31
32 http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54
33
34Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
35
36---------------------------
37
Robin Getz9d9b8fb2009-06-17 16:25:54 -070038What: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM
39Check: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM
40When: July 2009
41
42Why: Many of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM users are technically bogus as entropy
43 sources in the kernel's current entropy model. To resolve this, every
44 input point to the kernel's entropy pool needs to better document the
45 type of entropy source it actually is. This will be replaced with
46 additional add_*_randomness functions in drivers/char/random.c
47
48Who: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org> & Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
49
50---------------------------
51
Luis R. Rodriguez6ee7d332009-03-20 23:53:06 -040052What: The ieee80211_regdom module parameter
Luis R. Rodriguez8a5117d2009-03-24 21:21:07 -040053When: March 2010 / desktop catchup
Luis R. Rodriguez6ee7d332009-03-20 23:53:06 -040054
55Why: This was inherited by the CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY code,
56 and currently serves as an option for users to define an
57 ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2 code for the country they are currently
58 present in. Although there are userspace API replacements for this
59 through nl80211 distributions haven't yet caught up with implementing
60 decent alternatives through standard GUIs. Although available as an
61 option through iw or wpa_supplicant its just a matter of time before
62 distributions pick up good GUI options for this. The ideal solution
63 would actually consist of intelligent designs which would do this for
64 the user automatically even when travelling through different countries.
65 Until then we leave this module parameter as a compromise.
66
67 When userspace improves with reasonable widely-available alternatives for
68 this we will no longer need this module parameter. This entry hopes that
69 by the super-futuristically looking date of "March 2010" we will have
70 such replacements widely available.
71
72Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
73
74---------------------------
75
Luis R. Rodriguez8a5117d2009-03-24 21:21:07 -040076What: CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY - old static regulatory information
77When: March 2010 / desktop catchup
78
Luis R. Rodriguezb2e1b302008-09-09 23:19:48 -070079Why: The old regulatory infrastructure has been replaced with a new one
80 which does not require statically defined regulatory domains. We do
81 not want to keep static regulatory domains in the kernel due to the
82 the dynamic nature of regulatory law and localization. We kept around
83 the old static definitions for the regulatory domains of:
Luis R. Rodriguez8a5117d2009-03-24 21:21:07 -040084
Luis R. Rodriguezb2e1b302008-09-09 23:19:48 -070085 * US
86 * JP
87 * EU
Luis R. Rodriguez8a5117d2009-03-24 21:21:07 -040088
Luis R. Rodriguezb2e1b302008-09-09 23:19:48 -070089 and used by default the US when CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY was
Luis R. Rodriguez8a5117d2009-03-24 21:21:07 -040090 set. We will remove this option once the standard Linux desktop catches
91 up with the new userspace APIs we have implemented.
92
Luis R. Rodriguezb2e1b302008-09-09 23:19:48 -070093Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
94
95---------------------------
96
Alan Stern471d0552007-07-12 16:55:07 -040097What: dev->power.power_state
Pavel Machek1ebfd792006-08-30 13:50:27 -070098When: July 2007
99Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
100 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
101 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
102 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
103 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
104 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
105 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
106Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
107
108---------------------------
109
Mauro Carvalho Chehab42d12f52009-03-10 05:02:28 -0300110What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and from Video devices.
111When: July 2009
112Files: include/linux/videodev.h
113Check: include/linux/videodev.h
Mauro Carvalho Chehab11a5a102007-10-17 15:32:36 -0200114Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
Mauro Carvalho Chehab875c2962005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800115 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
116 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
117 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
118 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
119 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
120 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
121 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
122 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
Mauro Carvalho Chehab11a5a102007-10-17 15:32:36 -0200123 Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via
124 v4l1-compat module.
125Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
Mauro Carvalho Chehab875c2962005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800126
127---------------------------
128
Dominik Brodowskibf45d9b02005-07-07 17:58:58 -0700129What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
130When: November 2005
131Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
132Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
133 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
134 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
135 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
136 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
137 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
138 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
139 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
140 pcmciautils package available at
141 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
142Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
Harald Welte7af4cc32005-08-09 19:44:15 -0700143
144---------------------------
145
Eric W. Biederman7058cb02007-10-18 03:05:58 -0700146What: sys_sysctl
147When: September 2010
148Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL
149Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from
150 /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be
151 important performance wise.
152
153 Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel
154 bugs and security issues.
155
156 When I looked several months ago all I could find after
157 searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and
158 glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall.
159
160 The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user
161 space programs.
162
163 sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user
164 space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel.
165
166 For the last several months the policy has been no new binary
167 sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them.
168
169 Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so
170 properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a
171 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill
172 them and end the pain.
173
174 In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with
175 in a piecewise fashion.
176
177Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
178
179---------------------------
180
Christoph Hellwigac515892006-03-24 03:18:22 -0800181What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
182When: August 2006
183Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
Andy Whitcroftf0a594c2007-07-19 01:48:34 -0700184Check: kernel_thread
Christoph Hellwigac515892006-03-24 03:18:22 -0800185Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
186 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
187 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
188 prevents bugs and code duplication
189Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
190
191---------------------------
192
Arjan van de Venf71d20e2006-06-28 04:26:45 -0700193What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
194 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
195 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
196When: before 2.6.19
197Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
198 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
199Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
200
201---------------------------
202
Kay Sieversd81d9d62006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200203What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
Dominik Brodowskiacbd39f2006-09-30 22:41:43 -0400204When: October 2008
Kay Sieversd81d9d62006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200205Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
206 inconsistent.
207 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
208 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
209Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
210
211---------------------------
Jean Delvare6c805d22006-08-13 23:45:52 +0200212
Zhang Ruib981c592007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800213What: ACPI procfs interface
Zhang Rui8b8eb7d2007-07-18 17:23:24 +0800214When: July 2008
215Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
216 ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
217 there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
Zhang Ruib981c592007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800218Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
219
220---------------------------
221
Len Brown1bb67c22007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500222What: /proc/acpi/button
223When: August 2007
224Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
225 since 2.6.20.
226Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
227
228---------------------------
Jeff Garzik54b290a2007-01-23 00:29:01 -0500229
Len Brown14e04fb2007-08-23 15:20:26 -0400230What: /proc/acpi/event
231When: February 2008
232Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
233 and netlink since 2.6.23.
234Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
235
236---------------------------
237
Thomas Gleixner914d97f2007-10-11 11:20:05 +0200238What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
Ingo Molnar19b4e7f2008-04-10 10:12:27 +0200239When: April 2010
Thomas Gleixner914d97f2007-10-11 11:20:05 +0200240
241Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
242 location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
243 scripts, do not break.
244Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Linus Torvalds038a5002007-10-11 19:40:14 -0700245
246---------------------------
247
Jan Engelhardtf9ef8a22008-01-14 23:43:34 -0800248What (Why):
Jan Engelhardt079aa882008-10-08 11:35:00 +0200249 - xt_recent: the old ipt_recent proc dir
250 (superseded by /proc/net/xt_recent)
251
Jan Engelhardtf9ef8a22008-01-14 23:43:34 -0800252When: January 2009 or Linux 2.7.0, whichever comes first
253Why: Superseded by newer revisions or modules
254Who: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
Michael Buescheb189d82008-01-28 14:47:41 -0800255
256---------------------------
257
David Brownell8a0cecf2009-04-02 16:57:06 -0700258What: GPIO autorequest on gpio_direction_{input,output}() in gpiolib
259When: February 2010
260Why: All callers should use explicit gpio_request()/gpio_free().
261 The autorequest mechanism in gpiolib was provided mostly as a
262 migration aid for legacy GPIO interfaces (for SOC based GPIOs).
263 Those users have now largely migrated. Platforms implementing
264 the GPIO interfaces without using gpiolib will see no changes.
265Who: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
266---------------------------
267
Michael Buescheb189d82008-01-28 14:47:41 -0800268What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410
Michael Bueschc5572892008-12-27 18:26:39 +0100269When: The schedule was July 2008, but it was decided that we are going to keep the
270 code as long as there are no major maintanance headaches.
271 So it _could_ be removed _any_ time now, if it conflicts with something new.
Michael Buescheb189d82008-01-28 14:47:41 -0800272Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability
273 and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware
274 are not provided by Broadcom anymore.
275Who: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de>
David S. Millere88bb412008-02-09 23:08:53 -0800276
277---------------------------
278
Glauber Costafae9a0d2008-04-08 13:20:56 -0300279What: usedac i386 kernel parameter
280When: 2.6.27
281Why: replaced by allowdac and no dac combination
282Who: Glauber Costa <gcosta@redhat.com>
283
Mark Fasheh52f7c212008-01-29 17:08:26 -0800284---------------------------
285
Bjorn Helgaasc80cfb02008-10-15 22:01:35 -0700286What: print_fn_descriptor_symbol()
287When: October 2009
288Why: The %pF vsprintf format provides the same functionality in a
289 simpler way. print_fn_descriptor_symbol() is deprecated but
290 still present to give out-of-tree modules time to change.
291Who: Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com>
292
293---------------------------
294
Mark Fasheh52f7c212008-01-29 17:08:26 -0800295What: /sys/o2cb symlink
296When: January 2010
297Why: /sys/fs/o2cb is the proper location for this information - /sys/o2cb
298 exists as a symlink for backwards compatibility for old versions of
299 ocfs2-tools. 2 years should be sufficient time to phase in new versions
300 which know to look in /sys/fs/o2cb.
301Who: ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com
Matthew Wilcoxd2f5e802008-04-19 13:49:34 -0400302
303---------------------------
304
Vlad Yasevichecbed6a2008-07-01 20:06:22 -0700305What: SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDRS_NUM_OLD, SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDRS_OLD,
306 SCTP_GET_LOCAL_ADDRS_NUM_OLD, SCTP_GET_LOCAL_ADDRS_OLD
307When: June 2009
308Why: A newer version of the options have been introduced in 2005 that
309 removes the limitions of the old API. The sctp library has been
310 converted to use these new options at the same time. Any user
311 space app that directly uses the old options should convert to using
312 the new options.
313Who: Vlad Yasevich <vladislav.yasevich@hp.com>
David S. Millerea2aca02008-07-05 23:08:07 -0700314
315---------------------------
316
Ravikiran G Thirumalai2584e512009-03-31 15:21:26 -0700317What: Ability for non root users to shm_get hugetlb pages based on mlock
318 resource limits
319When: 2.6.31
320Why: Non root users need to be part of /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group or
321 have CAP_IPC_LOCK to be able to allocate shm segments backed by
322 huge pages. The mlock based rlimit check to allow shm hugetlb is
323 inconsistent with mmap based allocations. Hence it is being
324 deprecated.
325Who: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@scalex86.org>
326
327---------------------------
328
Rene Herman16d75232008-06-24 19:38:56 +0200329What: CONFIG_THERMAL_HWMON
330When: January 2009
331Why: This option was introduced just to allow older lm-sensors userspace
332 to keep working over the upgrade to 2.6.26. At the scheduled time of
333 removal fixed lm-sensors (2.x or 3.x) should be readily available.
334Who: Rene Herman <rene.herman@gmail.com>
Johannes Berg22bb1be2008-07-10 11:16:47 +0200335
336---------------------------
337
338What: Code that is now under CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT_SYSFS
339 (in net/core/net-sysfs.c)
340When: After the only user (hal) has seen a release with the patches
341 for enough time, probably some time in 2010.
342Why: Over 1K .text/.data size reduction, data is available in other
343 ways (ioctls)
344Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
Krzysztof Piotr Oledzki58401572008-07-21 10:01:34 -0700345
346---------------------------
347
348What: CONFIG_NF_CT_ACCT
349When: 2.6.29
350Why: Accounting can now be enabled/disabled without kernel recompilation.
351 Currently used only to set a default value for a feature that is also
352 controlled by a kernel/module/sysfs/sysctl parameter.
353Who: Krzysztof Piotr Oledzki <ole@ans.pl>
354
FUJITA Tomonori46dfa042008-09-10 22:22:34 +0200355---------------------------
356
Hans de Goede0589c2d2009-01-07 16:37:33 +0100357What: fscher and fscpos drivers
358When: June 2009
359Why: Deprecated by the new fschmd driver.
360Who: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
361 Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
362
363---------------------------
364
Dave Jones753b7ae2009-03-09 15:14:37 -0400365What: sysfs ui for changing p4-clockmod parameters
366When: September 2009
367Why: See commits 129f8ae9b1b5be94517da76009ea956e89104ce8 and
368 e088e4c9cdb618675874becb91b2fd581ee707e6.
369 Removal is subject to fixing any remaining bugs in ACPI which may
370 cause the thermal throttling not to happen at the right time.
371Who: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>, Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>
Thomas Gleixner0e57aa12009-03-13 14:34:05 +0100372
373-----------------------------
374
375What: __do_IRQ all in one fits nothing interrupt handler
376When: 2.6.32
377Why: __do_IRQ was kept for easy migration to the type flow handlers.
378 More than two years of migration time is enough.
379Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Thomas Gleixnercb065c02009-03-13 14:40:27 +0100380
381-----------------------------
382
Alex Chiangf110ca42009-03-20 14:56:56 -0600383What: fakephp and associated sysfs files in /sys/bus/pci/slots/
384When: 2011
385Why: In 2.6.27, the semantics of /sys/bus/pci/slots was redefined to
386 represent a machine's physical PCI slots. The change in semantics
387 had userspace implications, as the hotplug core no longer allowed
388 drivers to create multiple sysfs files per physical slot (required
389 for multi-function devices, e.g.). fakephp was seen as a developer's
390 tool only, and its interface changed. Too late, we learned that
391 there were some users of the fakephp interface.
392
393 In 2.6.30, the original fakephp interface was restored. At the same
394 time, the PCI core gained the ability that fakephp provided, namely
395 function-level hot-remove and hot-add.
396
397 Since the PCI core now provides the same functionality, exposed in:
398
399 /sys/bus/pci/rescan
400 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove
401 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../rescan
402
403 there is no functional reason to maintain fakephp as well.
404
405 We will keep the existing module so that 'modprobe fakephp' will
406 present the old /sys/bus/pci/slots/... interface for compatibility,
407 but users are urged to migrate their applications to the API above.
408
409 After a reasonable transition period, we will remove the legacy
410 fakephp interface.
411Who: Alex Chiang <achiang@hp.com>
Jean Delvare3f307fb2009-04-13 17:02:13 +0200412
413---------------------------
414
415What: i2c-voodoo3 driver
416When: October 2009
417Why: Superseded by tdfxfb. I2C/DDC support used to live in a separate
418 driver but this caused driver conflicts.
419Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
420 Krzysztof Helt <krzysztof.h1@wp.pl>
Johannes Bergc64fb012009-06-02 13:01:38 +0200421
422---------------------------
423
424What: CONFIG_RFKILL_INPUT
425When: 2.6.33
426Why: Should be implemented in userspace, policy daemon.
427Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
David S. Miller9cbc1cb2009-06-15 03:02:23 -0700428
Andi Kleen45f458e2009-04-28 23:18:26 +0200429----------------------------
430
venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com37c90e82009-07-02 17:08:31 -0700431What: lock_policy_rwsem_* and unlock_policy_rwsem_* will not be
432 exported interface anymore.
433When: 2.6.33
434Why: cpu_policy_rwsem has a new cleaner definition making it local to
435 cpufreq core and contained inside cpufreq.c. Other dependent
436 drivers should not use it in order to safely avoid lockdep issues.
437Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
Tejun Heo93fe4482009-08-06 18:14:26 +0900438
439----------------------------
440
441What: sound-slot/service-* module aliases and related clutters in
442 sound/sound_core.c
443When: August 2010
444Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR
445 (14) and requests modules using custom sound-slot/service-*
446 module aliases. The only benefit of doing this is allowing
447 use of custom module aliases which might as well be considered
448 a bug at this point. This preemptive claiming prevents
449 alternative OSS implementations.
450
451 Till the feature is removed, the kernel will be requesting
452 both sound-slot/service-* and the standard char-major-* module
453 aliases and allow turning off the pre-claiming selectively via
454 CONFIG_SOUND_OSS_CORE_PRECLAIM and soundcore.preclaim_oss
455 kernel parameter.
456
457 After the transition phase is complete, both the custom module
458 aliases and switches to disable it will go away. This removal
459 will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of
460 sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too.
461Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>