blob: 6748563036580e7f6a18091e2b9e27f6c3919528 [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
Hans Verkuil3f3f6a52007-03-10 08:10:11 -03009What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
10When: October 2007
11Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
12 not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
13 by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
14 in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
15 (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
16Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
17 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
18
19---------------------------
20
Pavel Machek1ebfd792006-08-30 13:50:27 -070021What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
22 dev->power.power_state
23 dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
24When: July 2007
25Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
26 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
27 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
28 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
29 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
30 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
31 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
32Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
33
34---------------------------
35
Adrian Bunk98e7f292005-06-25 14:59:37 -070036What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
37When: December 2005
38Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
39 O_DIRECT can be used instead
40Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
41
42---------------------------
43
Jody McIntyrea1446c72005-05-16 21:53:59 -070044What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
Stefan Richter9868e0e2006-11-20 00:05:05 +010045When: June 2007
46Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
47 Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
48 (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
49 raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
50Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
Grant Coady937df8d2005-05-12 11:59:29 +100051
52---------------------------
53
Mauro Carvalho Chehab875c2962005-11-08 21:38:53 -080054What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
Mauro Carvalho Chehab48c06d52006-09-06 09:29:00 -030055When: December 2006
Mauro Carvalho Chehab875c2962005-11-08 21:38:53 -080056Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
57 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
58 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
59 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
60 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
61 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
62 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
63 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
64 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
65Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
66
67---------------------------
68
Dominik Brodowskibf45d9b02005-07-07 17:58:58 -070069What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
70When: November 2005
71Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
72Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
73 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
74 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
75 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
76 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
77 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
78 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
79 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
80 pcmciautils package available at
81 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
82Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
Harald Welte7af4cc32005-08-09 19:44:15 -070083
84---------------------------
85
Christoph Hellwigac515892006-03-24 03:18:22 -080086What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
87When: August 2006
88Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
89Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
90 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
91 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
92 prevents bugs and code duplication
93Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
94
95---------------------------
96
Ingo Molnara9df3d02006-01-14 13:21:33 -080097What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
98When: June 2006
99Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
100 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
101 the option should just go away entirely.
102Who: Arjan van de Ven
103
104---------------------------
105
Bunkc0d3c0c2006-02-07 01:43:31 -0500106What: eepro100 network driver
107When: January 2007
108Why: replaced by the e100 driver
109Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
Jeff Garzik3c9b3a82006-02-07 01:47:12 -0500110
111---------------------------
112
Adrian Bunk1e5f5e52006-08-31 21:27:46 -0700113What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
114When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
115Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
116Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
117
118---------------------------
119
Richard Knutsson051d9892005-12-03 02:34:12 +0100120What: pci_module_init(driver)
121When: January 2007
122Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
123Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Jean Delvarec5e3fbf2006-01-18 22:39:48 +0100124
125---------------------------
126
Thomas Gleixner7d99b7d2006-03-25 03:06:35 -0800127What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
128When: March 2007
129Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
130 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
131 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
132 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
133 and the timevals are sanitized.
134
135Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
136
137---------------------------
138
Arjan van de Venf71d20e2006-06-28 04:26:45 -0700139What: 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.
142When: before 2.6.19
143Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
144 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
145Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
146
147---------------------------
148
Greg Kroah-Hartmanfa675762006-02-22 09:39:02 -0800149What: mount/umount uevents
150When: February 2007
151Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
152 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
153 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
154Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Ralf Baechlecf028d12006-03-02 16:50:12 +0000155
156---------------------------
157
Greg Kroah-Hartmanb87ba0a2006-03-20 13:17:13 -0800158What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
Matt LaPlantea2ffd272006-10-03 22:49:15 +0200159When: February 2008
Greg Kroah-Hartmanb87ba0a2006-03-20 13:17:13 -0800160Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
161Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
162 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
163 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
164 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
165 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
166 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
167 userspace filesystems, please contact the
168 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
169 there will be glad to help you out.
170Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
171
172---------------------------
Nick Piggin93fac702006-03-31 02:29:56 -0800173
Thomas Gleixner6e213612006-07-01 19:29:03 -0700174What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
175When: Januar 2007
176Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
177 out of the signal namespace.
178
179Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
180
181---------------------------
Jean Delvare5a017482006-07-01 17:13:37 +0200182
Kay Sieversd81d9d62006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200183What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
Dominik Brodowskiacbd39f2006-09-30 22:41:43 -0400184When: October 2008
Kay Sieversd81d9d62006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200185Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
186 inconsistent.
187 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
188 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
189Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
190
191---------------------------
Jean Delvare6c805d22006-08-13 23:45:52 +0200192
193What: i2c-isa
194When: December 2006
195Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
196 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
197 drivers.
198Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
199
200---------------------------
Jeff Garzik31e7e1a2006-10-03 01:13:54 -0700201
David Brownellb119dc32007-01-04 13:07:04 +0100202What: i2c_adapter.dev
203 i2c_adapter.list
204When: July 2007
205Why: Superfluous, given i2c_adapter.class_dev:
206 * The "dev" was a stand-in for the physical device node that legacy
207 drivers would not have; but now it's almost always present. Any
208 remaining legacy drivers must upgrade (they now trigger warnings).
209 * The "list" duplicates class device children.
210 The delay in removing this is so upgraded lm_sensors and libsensors
211 can get deployed. (Removal causes minor changes in the sysfs layout,
212 notably the location of the adapter type name and parenting the i2c
213 client hardware directly from their controller.)
214Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
215 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
216
217---------------------------
218
Adrian Bunk5aab0ad2007-02-10 01:45:50 -0800219What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
220When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
221Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
222Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
223
224---------------------------
225
Venkatesh Pallipadi83d05152006-10-03 12:34:28 -0700226What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
227When: December 2006
228Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
229 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
230 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
231 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
232 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
233 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
234 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
235 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
236 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
237 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
238 going out of sync.
239 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
240 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
241 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
242 date.
243
244Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
245
246---------------------------
Len Brown1bb67c22007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500247
Len Brown1bb67c22007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500248What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
249When: 2.6.21
250Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
251 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
252 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
253
254 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
255 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
256 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
257 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
Len Brown1bb67c22007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500258Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
259
260---------------------------
261
Zhang Ruib981c592007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800262What: ACPI procfs interface
263When: July 2007
264Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
265 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
266Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
267
268---------------------------
269
Len Brown1bb67c22007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500270What: /proc/acpi/button
271When: August 2007
272Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
273 since 2.6.20.
274Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
275
276---------------------------
Jeff Garzik54b290a2007-01-23 00:29:01 -0500277
Stephen Hemmingerac38dfc2007-02-07 09:18:30 -0800278What: sk98lin network driver
279When: July 2007
280Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
281 replaced by the skge driver.
282Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
283
Richard Purdieff141a02007-02-10 01:29:11 -0500284---------------------------
285
286What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
287When: Oct 2007
288Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
289Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
290 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
291 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
292 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
293 use tslib by now.
294 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
295 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
296Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
297
298---------------------------
Johannes Bergcc2ccca2007-03-05 00:30:27 -0800299
Wim Van Sebroeckab97e6c2007-03-11 12:59:47 +0000300What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
301When: in 2.6.22
302Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
303 watchdog driver.
304Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
305
306---------------------------
David S. Miller49e9f702007-04-27 01:04:23 -0700307
308What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
309When: in 2.6.23
310Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
311 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
312 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
313 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
314 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
315 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
316 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
317 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
318 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
319 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
320 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
321 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
322 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
323Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
324
325---------------------------