Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 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. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | --------------------------- |
| 8 | |
Luis R. Rodriguez | 4d8cd26 | 2009-09-08 12:09:47 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 9 | What: PRISM54 |
| 10 | When: 2.6.34 |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Why: 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 | |
| 34 | Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com> |
| 35 | |
| 36 | --------------------------- |
| 37 | |
Robin Getz | 9d9b8fb0 | 2009-06-17 16:25:54 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 38 | What: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM |
| 39 | Check: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM |
| 40 | When: July 2009 |
| 41 | |
| 42 | Why: 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 | |
| 48 | Who: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org> & Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> |
| 49 | |
| 50 | --------------------------- |
| 51 | |
Jiri Slaby | b694e52 | 2010-01-27 23:47:50 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 52 | What: Deprecated snapshot ioctls |
| 53 | When: 2.6.36 |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Why: The ioctls in kernel/power/user.c were marked as deprecated long time |
| 56 | ago. Now they notify users about that so that they need to replace |
| 57 | their userspace. After some more time, remove them completely. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com> |
| 60 | |
| 61 | --------------------------- |
| 62 | |
Luis R. Rodriguez | 6ee7d33 | 2009-03-20 23:53:06 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 63 | What: The ieee80211_regdom module parameter |
Luis R. Rodriguez | 8a5117d | 2009-03-24 21:21:07 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 64 | When: March 2010 / desktop catchup |
Luis R. Rodriguez | 6ee7d33 | 2009-03-20 23:53:06 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 65 | |
| 66 | Why: This was inherited by the CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY code, |
| 67 | and currently serves as an option for users to define an |
| 68 | ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2 code for the country they are currently |
| 69 | present in. Although there are userspace API replacements for this |
| 70 | through nl80211 distributions haven't yet caught up with implementing |
| 71 | decent alternatives through standard GUIs. Although available as an |
| 72 | option through iw or wpa_supplicant its just a matter of time before |
| 73 | distributions pick up good GUI options for this. The ideal solution |
| 74 | would actually consist of intelligent designs which would do this for |
| 75 | the user automatically even when travelling through different countries. |
| 76 | Until then we leave this module parameter as a compromise. |
| 77 | |
| 78 | When userspace improves with reasonable widely-available alternatives for |
| 79 | this we will no longer need this module parameter. This entry hopes that |
| 80 | by the super-futuristically looking date of "March 2010" we will have |
| 81 | such replacements widely available. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com> |
| 84 | |
| 85 | --------------------------- |
| 86 | |
Alan Stern | 471d055 | 2007-07-12 16:55:07 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 87 | What: dev->power.power_state |
Pavel Machek | 1ebfd79 | 2006-08-30 13:50:27 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 88 | When: July 2007 |
| 89 | Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing |
| 90 | driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support |
| 91 | system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish |
| 92 | different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy |
| 93 | inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to |
| 94 | use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific |
| 95 | interfaces either to kernel or to userspace. |
Pavel Machek | a253129 | 2010-07-18 14:27:13 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 96 | Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> |
Pavel Machek | 1ebfd79 | 2006-08-30 13:50:27 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 97 | |
| 98 | --------------------------- |
| 99 | |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 42d12f5 | 2009-03-10 05:02:28 -0300 | [diff] [blame] | 100 | What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and from Video devices. |
| 101 | When: July 2009 |
| 102 | Files: include/linux/videodev.h |
| 103 | Check: include/linux/videodev.h |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 11a5a10 | 2007-10-17 15:32:36 -0200 | [diff] [blame] | 104 | Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API during migration from 2.4 to 2.6 |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 875c296 | 2005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 105 | series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough |
| 106 | means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is |
| 107 | already available on the main drivers and should be used instead. |
| 108 | Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle |
| 109 | old calls, replacing to newer ones. |
| 110 | Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to |
| 111 | communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow |
| 112 | V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls. |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 11a5a10 | 2007-10-17 15:32:36 -0200 | [diff] [blame] | 113 | Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via |
| 114 | v4l1-compat module. |
| 115 | Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org> |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 875c296 | 2005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 116 | |
| 117 | --------------------------- |
| 118 | |
Eric W. Biederman | 7058cb0 | 2007-10-18 03:05:58 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 119 | What: sys_sysctl |
| 120 | When: September 2010 |
| 121 | Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL |
| 122 | Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from |
| 123 | /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be |
| 124 | important performance wise. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel |
| 127 | bugs and security issues. |
| 128 | |
| 129 | When I looked several months ago all I could find after |
| 130 | searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and |
| 131 | glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall. |
| 132 | |
| 133 | The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user |
| 134 | space programs. |
| 135 | |
| 136 | sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user |
| 137 | space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | For the last several months the policy has been no new binary |
| 140 | sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so |
| 143 | properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a |
| 144 | 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill |
| 145 | them and end the pain. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with |
| 148 | in a piecewise fashion. |
| 149 | |
| 150 | Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> |
| 151 | |
| 152 | --------------------------- |
| 153 | |
David Rientjes | 51b1bd2 | 2010-08-09 17:19:47 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 154 | What: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj |
| 155 | When: August 2012 |
| 156 | Why: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj allows userspace to influence the oom killer's |
| 157 | badness heuristic used to determine which task to kill when the kernel |
| 158 | is out of memory. |
| 159 | |
| 160 | The badness heuristic has since been rewritten since the introduction of |
| 161 | this tunable such that its meaning is deprecated. The value was |
| 162 | implemented as a bitshift on a score generated by the badness() |
| 163 | function that did not have any precise units of measure. With the |
| 164 | rewrite, the score is given as a proportion of available memory to the |
| 165 | task allocating pages, so using a bitshift which grows the score |
| 166 | exponentially is, thus, impossible to tune with fine granularity. |
| 167 | |
| 168 | A much more powerful interface, /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj, was |
| 169 | introduced with the oom killer rewrite that allows users to increase or |
| 170 | decrease the badness() score linearly. This interface will replace |
| 171 | /proc/<pid>/oom_adj. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | A warning will be emitted to the kernel log if an application uses this |
| 174 | deprecated interface. After it is printed once, future warnings will be |
| 175 | suppressed until the kernel is rebooted. |
| 176 | |
| 177 | --------------------------- |
| 178 | |
Christoph Hellwig | ac51589 | 2006-03-24 03:18:22 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 179 | What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) |
| 180 | When: August 2006 |
| 181 | Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c |
Andy Whitcroft | f0a594c | 2007-07-19 01:48:34 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 182 | Check: kernel_thread |
Christoph Hellwig | ac51589 | 2006-03-24 03:18:22 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 183 | Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should |
| 184 | use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from |
| 185 | implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that |
| 186 | prevents bugs and code duplication |
| 187 | Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> |
| 188 | |
| 189 | --------------------------- |
| 190 | |
Arjan van de Ven | f71d20e | 2006-06-28 04:26:45 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 191 | What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports |
| 192 | (temporary transition config option provided until then) |
| 193 | The transition config option will also be removed at the same time. |
| 194 | When: before 2.6.19 |
| 195 | Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary |
| 196 | and are often a sign of "wrong API" |
| 197 | Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> |
| 198 | |
| 199 | --------------------------- |
| 200 | |
Kay Sievers | d81d9d6 | 2006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 201 | What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment |
Dominik Brodowski | acbd39f | 2006-09-30 22:41:43 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 202 | When: October 2008 |
Kay Sievers | d81d9d6 | 2006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 203 | Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and |
| 204 | inconsistent. |
| 205 | Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus |
| 206 | devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement. |
| 207 | Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de> |
| 208 | |
| 209 | --------------------------- |
Jean Delvare | 6c805d2 | 2006-08-13 23:45:52 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 210 | |
Zhang Rui | b981c59 | 2007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800 | [diff] [blame] | 211 | What: ACPI procfs interface |
Zhang Rui | 8b8eb7d | 2007-07-18 17:23:24 +0800 | [diff] [blame] | 212 | When: July 2008 |
| 213 | Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008. |
| 214 | ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that |
| 215 | there is enough time for the user space to catch up. |
Zhang Rui | b981c59 | 2007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800 | [diff] [blame] | 216 | Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com> |
| 217 | |
| 218 | --------------------------- |
| 219 | |
Len Brown | 1bb67c2 | 2007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 220 | What: /proc/acpi/button |
| 221 | When: August 2007 |
| 222 | Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer |
| 223 | since 2.6.20. |
| 224 | Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| 225 | |
| 226 | --------------------------- |
Jeff Garzik | 54b290a | 2007-01-23 00:29:01 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 227 | |
Len Brown | 14e04fb | 2007-08-23 15:20:26 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 228 | What: /proc/acpi/event |
| 229 | When: February 2008 |
| 230 | Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer |
| 231 | and netlink since 2.6.23. |
| 232 | Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| 233 | |
| 234 | --------------------------- |
| 235 | |
Thomas Gleixner | 914d97f | 2007-10-11 11:20:05 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 236 | What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks |
Ingo Molnar | 19b4e7f | 2008-04-10 10:12:27 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 237 | When: April 2010 |
Thomas Gleixner | 914d97f | 2007-10-11 11:20:05 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 238 | |
| 239 | Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage |
| 240 | location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package |
| 241 | scripts, do not break. |
| 242 | Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
Linus Torvalds | 038a500 | 2007-10-11 19:40:14 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 243 | |
| 244 | --------------------------- |
| 245 | |
David Brownell | 8a0cecf | 2009-04-02 16:57:06 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 246 | What: GPIO autorequest on gpio_direction_{input,output}() in gpiolib |
| 247 | When: February 2010 |
| 248 | Why: All callers should use explicit gpio_request()/gpio_free(). |
| 249 | The autorequest mechanism in gpiolib was provided mostly as a |
| 250 | migration aid for legacy GPIO interfaces (for SOC based GPIOs). |
| 251 | Those users have now largely migrated. Platforms implementing |
| 252 | the GPIO interfaces without using gpiolib will see no changes. |
| 253 | Who: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net> |
| 254 | --------------------------- |
| 255 | |
Michael Buesch | eb189d8b | 2008-01-28 14:47:41 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 256 | What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410 |
Michael Buesch | c557289 | 2008-12-27 18:26:39 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 257 | When: The schedule was July 2008, but it was decided that we are going to keep the |
| 258 | code as long as there are no major maintanance headaches. |
| 259 | So it _could_ be removed _any_ time now, if it conflicts with something new. |
Michael Buesch | eb189d8b | 2008-01-28 14:47:41 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 260 | Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability |
| 261 | and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware |
| 262 | are not provided by Broadcom anymore. |
| 263 | Who: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de> |
David S. Miller | e88bb41 | 2008-02-09 23:08:53 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 264 | |
| 265 | --------------------------- |
| 266 | |
Mark Fasheh | 52f7c21 | 2008-01-29 17:08:26 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 267 | What: /sys/o2cb symlink |
| 268 | When: January 2010 |
| 269 | Why: /sys/fs/o2cb is the proper location for this information - /sys/o2cb |
| 270 | exists as a symlink for backwards compatibility for old versions of |
| 271 | ocfs2-tools. 2 years should be sufficient time to phase in new versions |
| 272 | which know to look in /sys/fs/o2cb. |
| 273 | Who: ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com |
Matthew Wilcox | d2f5e80 | 2008-04-19 13:49:34 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 274 | |
| 275 | --------------------------- |
| 276 | |
Ravikiran G Thirumalai | 2584e51 | 2009-03-31 15:21:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 277 | What: Ability for non root users to shm_get hugetlb pages based on mlock |
| 278 | resource limits |
| 279 | When: 2.6.31 |
| 280 | Why: Non root users need to be part of /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group or |
| 281 | have CAP_IPC_LOCK to be able to allocate shm segments backed by |
| 282 | huge pages. The mlock based rlimit check to allow shm hugetlb is |
| 283 | inconsistent with mmap based allocations. Hence it is being |
| 284 | deprecated. |
| 285 | Who: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@scalex86.org> |
| 286 | |
| 287 | --------------------------- |
| 288 | |
Rene Herman | 16d7523 | 2008-06-24 19:38:56 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 289 | What: CONFIG_THERMAL_HWMON |
| 290 | When: January 2009 |
| 291 | Why: This option was introduced just to allow older lm-sensors userspace |
| 292 | to keep working over the upgrade to 2.6.26. At the scheduled time of |
| 293 | removal fixed lm-sensors (2.x or 3.x) should be readily available. |
| 294 | Who: Rene Herman <rene.herman@gmail.com> |
Johannes Berg | 22bb1be | 2008-07-10 11:16:47 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 295 | |
| 296 | --------------------------- |
| 297 | |
| 298 | What: Code that is now under CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT_SYSFS |
| 299 | (in net/core/net-sysfs.c) |
| 300 | When: After the only user (hal) has seen a release with the patches |
| 301 | for enough time, probably some time in 2010. |
| 302 | Why: Over 1K .text/.data size reduction, data is available in other |
| 303 | ways (ioctls) |
| 304 | Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> |
Krzysztof Piotr Oledzki | 5840157 | 2008-07-21 10:01:34 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 305 | |
| 306 | --------------------------- |
| 307 | |
Dave Jones | 753b7ae | 2009-03-09 15:14:37 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 308 | What: sysfs ui for changing p4-clockmod parameters |
| 309 | When: September 2009 |
| 310 | Why: See commits 129f8ae9b1b5be94517da76009ea956e89104ce8 and |
| 311 | e088e4c9cdb618675874becb91b2fd581ee707e6. |
| 312 | Removal is subject to fixing any remaining bugs in ACPI which may |
| 313 | cause the thermal throttling not to happen at the right time. |
| 314 | Who: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>, Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com> |
Thomas Gleixner | 0e57aa1 | 2009-03-13 14:34:05 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 315 | |
| 316 | ----------------------------- |
| 317 | |
| 318 | What: __do_IRQ all in one fits nothing interrupt handler |
| 319 | When: 2.6.32 |
| 320 | Why: __do_IRQ was kept for easy migration to the type flow handlers. |
| 321 | More than two years of migration time is enough. |
| 322 | Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
Thomas Gleixner | cb065c0 | 2009-03-13 14:40:27 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 323 | |
| 324 | ----------------------------- |
| 325 | |
Alex Chiang | f110ca4 | 2009-03-20 14:56:56 -0600 | [diff] [blame] | 326 | What: fakephp and associated sysfs files in /sys/bus/pci/slots/ |
| 327 | When: 2011 |
| 328 | Why: In 2.6.27, the semantics of /sys/bus/pci/slots was redefined to |
| 329 | represent a machine's physical PCI slots. The change in semantics |
| 330 | had userspace implications, as the hotplug core no longer allowed |
| 331 | drivers to create multiple sysfs files per physical slot (required |
| 332 | for multi-function devices, e.g.). fakephp was seen as a developer's |
| 333 | tool only, and its interface changed. Too late, we learned that |
| 334 | there were some users of the fakephp interface. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | In 2.6.30, the original fakephp interface was restored. At the same |
| 337 | time, the PCI core gained the ability that fakephp provided, namely |
| 338 | function-level hot-remove and hot-add. |
| 339 | |
| 340 | Since the PCI core now provides the same functionality, exposed in: |
| 341 | |
| 342 | /sys/bus/pci/rescan |
| 343 | /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove |
| 344 | /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../rescan |
| 345 | |
| 346 | there is no functional reason to maintain fakephp as well. |
| 347 | |
| 348 | We will keep the existing module so that 'modprobe fakephp' will |
| 349 | present the old /sys/bus/pci/slots/... interface for compatibility, |
| 350 | but users are urged to migrate their applications to the API above. |
| 351 | |
| 352 | After a reasonable transition period, we will remove the legacy |
| 353 | fakephp interface. |
| 354 | Who: Alex Chiang <achiang@hp.com> |
Jean Delvare | 3f307fb | 2009-04-13 17:02:13 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 355 | |
| 356 | --------------------------- |
| 357 | |
Johannes Berg | c64fb01 | 2009-06-02 13:01:38 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 358 | What: CONFIG_RFKILL_INPUT |
| 359 | When: 2.6.33 |
| 360 | Why: Should be implemented in userspace, policy daemon. |
| 361 | Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> |
David S. Miller | 9cbc1cb | 2009-06-15 03:02:23 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 362 | |
Andi Kleen | 45f458e | 2009-04-28 23:18:26 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 363 | ---------------------------- |
| 364 | |
Tejun Heo | 93fe448 | 2009-08-06 18:14:26 +0900 | [diff] [blame] | 365 | What: sound-slot/service-* module aliases and related clutters in |
| 366 | sound/sound_core.c |
| 367 | When: August 2010 |
| 368 | Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR |
| 369 | (14) and requests modules using custom sound-slot/service-* |
| 370 | module aliases. The only benefit of doing this is allowing |
| 371 | use of custom module aliases which might as well be considered |
| 372 | a bug at this point. This preemptive claiming prevents |
| 373 | alternative OSS implementations. |
| 374 | |
| 375 | Till the feature is removed, the kernel will be requesting |
| 376 | both sound-slot/service-* and the standard char-major-* module |
| 377 | aliases and allow turning off the pre-claiming selectively via |
| 378 | CONFIG_SOUND_OSS_CORE_PRECLAIM and soundcore.preclaim_oss |
| 379 | kernel parameter. |
| 380 | |
| 381 | After the transition phase is complete, both the custom module |
| 382 | aliases and switches to disable it will go away. This removal |
| 383 | will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of |
| 384 | sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. |
| 385 | Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> |
Alok Kataria | d0153ca | 2009-09-29 10:25:24 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 386 | |
| 387 | ---------------------------- |
| 388 | |
| 389 | What: Support for VMware's guest paravirtuliazation technique [VMI] will be |
| 390 | dropped. |
| 391 | When: 2.6.37 or earlier. |
| 392 | Why: With the recent innovations in CPU hardware acceleration technologies |
| 393 | from Intel and AMD, VMware ran a few experiments to compare these |
| 394 | techniques to guest paravirtualization technique on VMware's platform. |
| 395 | These hardware assisted virtualization techniques have outperformed the |
| 396 | performance benefits provided by VMI in most of the workloads. VMware |
| 397 | expects that these hardware features will be ubiquitous in a couple of |
| 398 | years, as a result, VMware has started a phased retirement of this |
| 399 | feature from the hypervisor. We will be removing this feature from the |
| 400 | Kernel too. Right now we are targeting 2.6.37 but can retire earlier if |
| 401 | technical reasons (read opportunity to remove major chunk of pvops) |
| 402 | arise. |
| 403 | |
| 404 | Please note that VMI has always been an optimization and non-VMI kernels |
| 405 | still work fine on VMware's platform. |
| 406 | Latest versions of VMware's product which support VMI are, |
| 407 | Workstation 7.0 and VSphere 4.0 on ESX side, future maintainence |
| 408 | releases for these products will continue supporting VMI. |
| 409 | |
| 410 | For more details about VMI retirement take a look at this, |
| 411 | http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html |
| 412 | |
| 413 | Who: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com> |
| 414 | |
| 415 | ---------------------------- |
Jean Delvare | b180d05 | 2009-12-09 20:36:02 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 416 | |
Corentin Chary | 728900f | 2009-12-03 07:45:17 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 417 | What: Support for lcd_switch and display_get in asus-laptop driver |
| 418 | When: March 2010 |
| 419 | Why: These two features use non-standard interfaces. There are the |
| 420 | only features that really need multiple path to guess what's |
| 421 | the right method name on a specific laptop. |
| 422 | |
| 423 | Removing them will allow to remove a lot of code an significantly |
| 424 | clean the drivers. |
| 425 | |
| 426 | This will affect the backlight code which won't be able to know |
| 427 | if the backlight is on or off. The platform display file will also be |
| 428 | write only (like the one in eeepc-laptop). |
| 429 | |
| 430 | This should'nt affect a lot of user because they usually know |
| 431 | when their display is on or off. |
| 432 | |
| 433 | Who: Corentin Chary <corentin.chary@gmail.com> |
| 434 | |
| 435 | ---------------------------- |
Hans de Goede | ceafe1d | 2010-01-11 10:50:53 -0200 | [diff] [blame] | 436 | |
florian@mickler.org | 69c8637 | 2010-02-24 12:05:16 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 437 | What: sysfs-class-rfkill state file |
| 438 | When: Feb 2014 |
| 439 | Files: net/rfkill/core.c |
| 440 | Why: Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010. This file is limited to 3 |
| 441 | states while the rfkill drivers can have 4 states. |
| 442 | Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org> |
| 443 | |
| 444 | ---------------------------- |
| 445 | |
| 446 | What: sysfs-class-rfkill claim file |
| 447 | When: Feb 2012 |
| 448 | Files: net/rfkill/core.c |
| 449 | Why: It is not possible to claim an rfkill driver since 2007. This is |
| 450 | Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010. |
| 451 | Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org> |
| 452 | |
| 453 | ---------------------------- |
| 454 | |
Jan Kiszka | 79e95f4 | 2010-02-08 10:12:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 455 | What: capifs |
| 456 | When: February 2011 |
| 457 | Files: drivers/isdn/capi/capifs.* |
| 458 | Why: udev fully replaces this special file system that only contains CAPI |
| 459 | NCCI TTY device nodes. User space (pppdcapiplugin) works without |
| 460 | noticing the difference. |
| 461 | Who: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de> |
Linus Torvalds | c812a51 | 2010-03-05 13:12:34 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 462 | |
| 463 | ---------------------------- |
| 464 | |
Avi Kivity | db35879 | 2010-01-26 16:30:06 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 465 | What: KVM paravirt mmu host support |
| 466 | When: January 2011 |
| 467 | Why: The paravirt mmu host support is slower than non-paravirt mmu, both |
| 468 | on newer and older hardware. It is already not exposed to the guest, |
| 469 | and kept only for live migration purposes. |
| 470 | Who: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com> |
Linus Torvalds | c812a51 | 2010-03-05 13:12:34 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 471 | |
| 472 | ---------------------------- |
Len Brown | 4c81ba4 | 2010-03-14 16:28:46 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 473 | |
Wey-Yi Guy | 2b06861 | 2010-03-22 09:17:39 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 474 | What: iwlwifi 50XX module parameters |
| 475 | When: 2.6.40 |
| 476 | Why: The "..50" modules parameters were used to configure 5000 series and |
| 477 | up devices; different set of module parameters also available for 4965 |
| 478 | with same functionalities. Consolidate both set into single place |
| 479 | in drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-agn.c |
| 480 | |
| 481 | Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com> |
Wey-Yi Guy | d34a5a6 | 2010-03-23 10:17:03 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 482 | |
| 483 | ---------------------------- |
| 484 | |
| 485 | What: iwl4965 alias support |
| 486 | When: 2.6.40 |
| 487 | Why: Internal alias support has been present in module-init-tools for some |
| 488 | time, the MODULE_ALIAS("iwl4965") boilerplate aliases can be removed |
| 489 | with no impact. |
| 490 | |
| 491 | Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com> |
Patrick McHardy | 6291055 | 2010-04-20 16:02:01 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 492 | |
Jan Engelhardt | 0cb47ea | 2010-03-16 18:25:12 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 493 | --------------------------- |
| 494 | |
| 495 | What: xt_NOTRACK |
| 496 | Files: net/netfilter/xt_NOTRACK.c |
| 497 | When: April 2011 |
| 498 | Why: Superseded by xt_CT |
| 499 | Who: Netfilter developer team <netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org> |
David S. Miller | 278554b | 2010-05-12 00:05:35 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 500 | |
| 501 | --------------------------- |
| 502 | |
Hans Verkuil | b75396a | 2010-03-22 05:43:08 -0300 | [diff] [blame] | 503 | What: video4linux /dev/vtx teletext API support |
| 504 | When: 2.6.35 |
| 505 | Files: drivers/media/video/saa5246a.c drivers/media/video/saa5249.c |
| 506 | include/linux/videotext.h |
| 507 | Why: The vtx device nodes have been superseded by vbi device nodes |
| 508 | for many years. No applications exist that use the vtx support. |
| 509 | Of the two i2c drivers that actually support this API the saa5249 |
| 510 | has been impossible to use for a year now and no known hardware |
| 511 | that supports this device exists. The saa5246a is theoretically |
| 512 | supported by the old mxb boards, but it never actually worked. |
| 513 | |
| 514 | In summary: there is no hardware that can use this API and there |
| 515 | are no applications actually implementing this API. |
| 516 | |
| 517 | The vtx support still reserves minors 192-223 and we would really |
| 518 | like to reuse those for upcoming new functionality. In the unlikely |
| 519 | event that new hardware appears that wants to use the functionality |
| 520 | provided by the vtx API, then that functionality should be build |
| 521 | around the sliced VBI API instead. |
| 522 | Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> |
Linus Torvalds | 6e0b7b2 | 2010-05-19 17:09:40 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 523 | |
| 524 | ---------------------------- |
| 525 | |
Thomas Gleixner | 6932bf3 | 2010-03-26 00:06:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 526 | What: IRQF_DISABLED |
| 527 | When: 2.6.36 |
| 528 | Why: The flag is a NOOP as we run interrupt handlers with interrupts disabled |
| 529 | Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
Linus Torvalds | 6e0b7b2 | 2010-05-19 17:09:40 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 530 | |
| 531 | ---------------------------- |
| 532 | |
Stefan Richter | 3014420 | 2010-05-24 21:31:23 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 533 | What: old ieee1394 subsystem (CONFIG_IEEE1394) |
| 534 | When: 2.6.37 |
| 535 | Files: drivers/ieee1394/ except init_ohci1394_dma.c |
| 536 | Why: superseded by drivers/firewire/ (CONFIG_FIREWIRE) which offers more |
| 537 | features, better performance, and better security, all with smaller |
| 538 | and more modern code base |
| 539 | Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de> |
Linus Torvalds | 55ddf14 | 2010-05-27 10:22:06 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 540 | |
| 541 | ---------------------------- |
| 542 | |
Rafael J. Wysocki | 72ad5d7 | 2010-07-23 22:59:09 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 543 | What: The acpi_sleep=s4_nonvs command line option |
| 544 | When: 2.6.37 |
| 545 | Files: arch/x86/kernel/acpi/sleep.c |
| 546 | Why: superseded by acpi_sleep=nonvs |
| 547 | Who: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl> |
| 548 | |
| 549 | ---------------------------- |
FUJITA Tomonori | 1758336 | 2010-08-10 18:03:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 550 | |
| 551 | What: PCI DMA unmap state API |
| 552 | When: August 2012 |
| 553 | Why: PCI DMA unmap state API (include/linux/pci-dma.h) was replaced |
| 554 | with DMA unmap state API (DMA unmap state API can be used for |
| 555 | any bus). |
| 556 | Who: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp> |
| 557 | |
| 558 | ---------------------------- |
FUJITA Tomonori | a35274c | 2010-08-10 18:03:26 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 559 | |
| 560 | What: DMA_xxBIT_MASK macros |
| 561 | When: Jun 2011 |
| 562 | Why: DMA_xxBIT_MASK macros were replaced with DMA_BIT_MASK() macros. |
| 563 | Who: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp> |
| 564 | |
| 565 | ---------------------------- |
| 566 | |