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: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
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>
75 ---------------------------
77 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
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>
92 ---------------------------
94 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
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>
103 ---------------------------
105 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
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
112 ---------------------------
114 What: eepro100 network driver
116 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
117 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
119 ---------------------------
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>
126 ---------------------------
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.
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>
136 ---------------------------
138 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
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>
152 ---------------------------
154 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
156 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
157 out of the signal namespace.
159 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
161 ---------------------------
163 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
165 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
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>
171 ---------------------------
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
178 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
180 ---------------------------
182 What: i2c_adapter.list
184 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
186 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
187 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
189 ---------------------------
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>
196 ---------------------------
198 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
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
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
216 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
218 ---------------------------
220 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
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.
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
230 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
232 ---------------------------
234 What: ACPI procfs interface
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>
240 ---------------------------
242 What: /proc/acpi/button
244 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
246 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
248 ---------------------------
250 What: sk98lin network driver
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>
256 ---------------------------
258 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
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
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>
270 ---------------------------
272 What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
274 Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
276 Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
278 ---------------------------
280 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
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>
297 ---------------------------
299 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
301 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
303 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
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
311 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
313 ---------------------------
315 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
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>
321 ---------------------------
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>
328 ---------------------------