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 | |
Jiri Slaby | 9e40210 | 2007-05-08 00:36:28 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 9 | What: MXSER |
| 10 | When: December 2007 |
| 11 | Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet |
| 12 | and remove it. |
| 13 | Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com> |
| 14 | |
| 15 | --------------------------- |
| 16 | |
Hans Verkuil | 3f3f6a5 | 2007-03-10 08:10:11 -0300 | [diff] [blame] | 17 | What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP |
| 18 | When: October 2007 |
| 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> |
| 26 | |
| 27 | --------------------------- |
| 28 | |
Pavel Machek | 1ebfd79 | 2006-08-30 13:50:27 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 29 | What: /sys/devices/.../power/state |
| 30 | dev->power.power_state |
| 31 | dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)() |
| 32 | When: July 2007 |
| 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> |
| 41 | |
| 42 | --------------------------- |
| 43 | |
Adrian Bunk | 98e7f29 | 2005-06-25 14:59:37 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 44 | What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER) |
| 45 | When: December 2005 |
| 46 | Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3 |
| 47 | O_DIRECT can be used instead |
| 48 | Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| 49 | |
| 50 | --------------------------- |
| 51 | |
Jody McIntyre | a1446c7 | 2005-05-16 21:53:59 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 52 | What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN |
Stefan Richter | 9868e0e | 2006-11-20 00:05:05 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 53 | When: June 2007 |
| 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> |
Grant Coady | 937df8d | 2005-05-12 11:59:29 +1000 | [diff] [blame] | 59 | |
| 60 | --------------------------- |
| 61 | |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 875c296 | 2005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 62 | What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices. |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 48c06d5 | 2006-09-06 09:29:00 -0300 | [diff] [blame] | 63 | When: December 2006 |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | 875c296 | 2005-11-08 21:38:53 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 64 | Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6 |
| 65 | series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough |
| 66 | means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is |
| 67 | already available on the main drivers and should be used instead. |
| 68 | Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle |
| 69 | old calls, replacing to newer ones. |
| 70 | Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to |
| 71 | communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow |
| 72 | V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls. |
| 73 | Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br> |
| 74 | |
| 75 | --------------------------- |
| 76 | |
Dominik Brodowski | bf45d9b0 | 2005-07-07 17:58:58 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 77 | What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl]) |
| 78 | When: November 2005 |
| 79 | Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c |
| 80 | Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a |
| 81 | normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel |
| 82 | infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA |
| 83 | control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is |
| 84 | unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the |
| 85 | PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more |
| 86 | difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either |
| 87 | handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new |
| 88 | pcmciautils package available at |
| 89 | http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/ |
| 90 | Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de> |
Harald Welte | 7af4cc3 | 2005-08-09 19:44:15 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 91 | |
| 92 | --------------------------- |
| 93 | |
Christoph Hellwig | ac51589 | 2006-03-24 03:18:22 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 94 | What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) |
| 95 | When: August 2006 |
| 96 | Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c |
| 97 | Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should |
| 98 | use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from |
| 99 | implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that |
| 100 | prevents bugs and code duplication |
| 101 | Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> |
| 102 | |
| 103 | --------------------------- |
| 104 | |
Ingo Molnar | a9df3d0 | 2006-01-14 13:21:33 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 105 | What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING |
| 106 | When: June 2006 |
| 107 | Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january |
| 108 | 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not, |
| 109 | the option should just go away entirely. |
| 110 | Who: Arjan van de Ven |
| 111 | |
| 112 | --------------------------- |
| 113 | |
Bunk | c0d3c0c | 2006-02-07 01:43:31 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 114 | What: eepro100 network driver |
| 115 | When: January 2007 |
| 116 | Why: replaced by the e100 driver |
| 117 | Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
Jeff Garzik | 3c9b3a8 | 2006-02-07 01:47:12 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 118 | |
| 119 | --------------------------- |
| 120 | |
Adrian Bunk | 1e5f5e5 | 2006-08-31 21:27:46 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 121 | What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER |
| 122 | When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22 |
| 123 | Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements |
| 124 | Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| 125 | |
| 126 | --------------------------- |
| 127 | |
Arjan van de Ven | f71d20e | 2006-06-28 04:26:45 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 128 | What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports |
| 129 | (temporary transition config option provided until then) |
| 130 | The transition config option will also be removed at the same time. |
| 131 | When: before 2.6.19 |
| 132 | Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary |
| 133 | and are often a sign of "wrong API" |
| 134 | Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> |
| 135 | |
| 136 | --------------------------- |
| 137 | |
Greg Kroah-Hartman | b87ba0a | 2006-03-20 13:17:13 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 138 | What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL |
Matt LaPlante | a2ffd27 | 2006-10-03 22:49:15 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 139 | When: February 2008 |
Greg Kroah-Hartman | b87ba0a | 2006-03-20 13:17:13 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 140 | Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c |
| 141 | Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been |
| 142 | possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs |
| 143 | that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB |
| 144 | subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to |
| 145 | register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs |
| 146 | any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the |
| 147 | userspace filesystems, please contact the |
| 148 | linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers |
| 149 | there will be glad to help you out. |
| 150 | Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> |
| 151 | |
| 152 | --------------------------- |
Nick Piggin | 93fac70 | 2006-03-31 02:29:56 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 153 | |
Thomas Gleixner | 6e21361 | 2006-07-01 19:29:03 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 154 | What: Interrupt only SA_* flags |
Thomas Gleixner | 0e8638e | 2007-05-08 00:28:56 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 155 | When: September 2007 |
Thomas Gleixner | 6e21361 | 2006-07-01 19:29:03 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 156 | Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them |
| 157 | out of the signal namespace. |
| 158 | |
| 159 | Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> |
| 160 | |
| 161 | --------------------------- |
Jean Delvare | 5a01748 | 2006-07-01 17:13:37 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 162 | |
Kay Sievers | d81d9d6 | 2006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 163 | What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment |
Dominik Brodowski | acbd39f | 2006-09-30 22:41:43 -0400 | [diff] [blame] | 164 | When: October 2008 |
Kay Sievers | d81d9d6 | 2006-08-13 06:17:09 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 165 | Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and |
| 166 | inconsistent. |
| 167 | Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus |
| 168 | devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement. |
| 169 | Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de> |
| 170 | |
| 171 | --------------------------- |
Jean Delvare | 6c805d2 | 2006-08-13 23:45:52 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 172 | |
| 173 | What: i2c-isa |
| 174 | When: December 2006 |
| 175 | Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver |
| 176 | model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform |
| 177 | drivers. |
| 178 | Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| 179 | |
| 180 | --------------------------- |
Jeff Garzik | 31e7e1a | 2006-10-03 01:13:54 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 181 | |
Jean Delvare | fccb56e | 2007-05-01 23:26:27 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 182 | What: i2c_adapter.list |
David Brownell | b119dc3 | 2007-01-04 13:07:04 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 183 | When: July 2007 |
Jean Delvare | fccb56e | 2007-05-01 23:26:27 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 184 | Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver |
| 185 | core. |
David Brownell | b119dc3 | 2007-01-04 13:07:04 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 186 | Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>, |
| 187 | David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net> |
| 188 | |
| 189 | --------------------------- |
| 190 | |
Adrian Bunk | 5aab0ad | 2007-02-10 01:45:50 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 191 | What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS |
| 192 | When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24 |
| 193 | Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements |
| 194 | Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| 195 | |
| 196 | --------------------------- |
| 197 | |
Venkatesh Pallipadi | 83d0515 | 2006-10-03 12:34:28 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 198 | What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver |
| 199 | When: December 2006 |
| 200 | Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are |
| 201 | functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only |
| 202 | difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions. |
| 203 | One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of |
| 204 | speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq. |
| 205 | That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep |
| 206 | capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of |
| 207 | speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on |
| 208 | non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and |
| 209 | less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers |
| 210 | going out of sync. |
| 211 | Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to |
| 212 | switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue |
| 213 | to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this |
| 214 | date. |
| 215 | |
| 216 | Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com> |
| 217 | |
| 218 | --------------------------- |
Len Brown | 1bb67c2 | 2007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 219 | |
Len Brown | 1bb67c2 | 2007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 220 | What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace |
| 221 | When: 2.6.21 |
| 222 | Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for |
| 223 | the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary |
| 224 | and have no place being exposed to user-space. |
| 225 | |
| 226 | For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace, |
| 227 | the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump |
| 228 | and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here: |
| 229 | http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils |
Len Brown | 1bb67c2 | 2007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 230 | Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| 231 | |
| 232 | --------------------------- |
| 233 | |
Zhang Rui | b981c59 | 2007-01-29 11:02:30 +0800 | [diff] [blame] | 234 | What: ACPI procfs interface |
| 235 | When: July 2007 |
| 236 | Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated |
| 237 | in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed. |
| 238 | Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com> |
| 239 | |
| 240 | --------------------------- |
| 241 | |
Len Brown | 1bb67c2 | 2007-01-11 01:49:44 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 242 | What: /proc/acpi/button |
| 243 | When: August 2007 |
| 244 | Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer |
| 245 | since 2.6.20. |
| 246 | Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> |
| 247 | |
| 248 | --------------------------- |
Jeff Garzik | 54b290a | 2007-01-23 00:29:01 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 249 | |
Stephen Hemminger | ac38dfc | 2007-02-07 09:18:30 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 250 | What: sk98lin network driver |
| 251 | When: July 2007 |
| 252 | Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver |
| 253 | replaced by the skge driver. |
| 254 | Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org> |
| 255 | |
Richard Purdie | ff141a0 | 2007-02-10 01:29:11 -0500 | [diff] [blame] | 256 | --------------------------- |
| 257 | |
| 258 | What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation |
| 259 | When: Oct 2007 |
| 260 | Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c |
| 261 | Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001. |
| 262 | tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and |
| 263 | much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no |
| 264 | longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to |
| 265 | use tslib by now. |
| 266 | The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have |
| 267 | it loaded when they don't need/use it. |
| 268 | Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net> |
| 269 | |
| 270 | --------------------------- |
Johannes Berg | cc2ccca | 2007-03-05 00:30:27 -0800 | [diff] [blame] | 271 | |
Wim Van Sebroeck | ab97e6c | 2007-03-11 12:59:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 272 | What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver |
| 273 | When: in 2.6.22 |
| 274 | Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt |
| 275 | watchdog driver. |
| 276 | Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be> |
| 277 | |
| 278 | --------------------------- |
David S. Miller | 49e9f70 | 2007-04-27 01:04:23 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 279 | |
| 280 | What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4 |
| 281 | When: in 2.6.23 |
| 282 | Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving |
| 283 | us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have |
| 284 | been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's |
| 285 | implementation are blocking more critical core networking |
| 286 | development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution |
| 287 | enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs |
| 288 | (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be |
| 289 | handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling |
| 290 | errors impossible too because they get called after we've |
| 291 | totally commited to creating a route object, for example). |
| 292 | This problem has existed for years and no forward progress |
| 293 | has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage |
| 294 | this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it. |
| 295 | Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> |
| 296 | |
| 297 | --------------------------- |
Cornelia Huck | 52706ec | 2007-05-04 18:47:50 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 298 | |
| 299 | What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer) |
| 300 | When: December 2007 |
| 301 | Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several |
| 302 | problems: |
| 303 | - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's |
| 304 | interrupt handler |
| 305 | - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery |
| 306 | - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during |
| 307 | execution of the function |
| 308 | Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read |
| 309 | configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling |
| 310 | themselves. |
| 311 | Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com> |
| 312 | |
| 313 | --------------------------- |
| 314 | |
Jean Delvare | 11de70b | 2007-05-01 23:26:34 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 315 | What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers |
| 316 | When: September 2007 |
| 317 | Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific |
| 318 | I2C-over-GPIO drivers. |
| 319 | Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> |
| 320 | |
| 321 | --------------------------- |
Adrian Bunk | 274ee1c | 2007-05-08 00:27:14 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 322 | |
| 323 | What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE |
| 324 | When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25 |
| 325 | Why: obsolete OSS drivers |
| 326 | Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> |
| 327 | |
| 328 | --------------------------- |
| 329 | |