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 ---------------------------
9 What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
11 Why: 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.
16 Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
17 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
19 ---------------------------
21 What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
22 dev->power.power_state
23 dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
25 Why: 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.
32 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
34 ---------------------------
36 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
38 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
39 O_DIRECT can be used instead
40 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
42 ---------------------------
44 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
46 Why: 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.
50 Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
52 ---------------------------
54 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
56 Why: 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.
65 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
67 ---------------------------
69 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
71 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
72 Why: 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/
82 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
84 ---------------------------
86 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
88 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
89 Why: 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
93 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
95 ---------------------------
97 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
99 Why: 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.
102 Who: Arjan van de Ven
104 ---------------------------
106 What: eepro100 network driver
108 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
109 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
111 ---------------------------
113 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
114 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
115 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
116 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
118 ---------------------------
120 What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
122 Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
123 was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
124 silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
125 Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
126 and the timevals are sanitized.
128 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
130 ---------------------------
132 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
133 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
134 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
136 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
137 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
138 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
140 ---------------------------
142 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
144 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
145 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
146 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
147 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
148 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
149 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
150 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
151 userspace filesystems, please contact the
152 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
153 there will be glad to help you out.
154 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
156 ---------------------------
158 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
160 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
161 out of the signal namespace.
163 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
165 ---------------------------
167 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
169 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
171 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
172 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
173 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
175 ---------------------------
179 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
180 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
182 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
184 ---------------------------
186 What: i2c_adapter.dev
189 Why: Superfluous, given i2c_adapter.class_dev:
190 * The "dev" was a stand-in for the physical device node that legacy
191 drivers would not have; but now it's almost always present. Any
192 remaining legacy drivers must upgrade (they now trigger warnings).
193 * The "list" duplicates class device children.
194 The delay in removing this is so upgraded lm_sensors and libsensors
195 can get deployed. (Removal causes minor changes in the sysfs layout,
196 notably the location of the adapter type name and parenting the i2c
197 client hardware directly from their controller.)
198 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
199 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
201 ---------------------------
203 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
204 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
205 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
206 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
208 ---------------------------
210 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
212 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
213 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
214 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
215 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
216 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
217 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
218 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
219 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
220 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
221 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
223 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
224 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
225 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
228 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
230 ---------------------------
232 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
234 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
235 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
236 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
238 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
239 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
240 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
241 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
242 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
244 ---------------------------
246 What: ACPI procfs interface
248 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
249 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
250 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
252 ---------------------------
254 What: /proc/acpi/button
256 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
258 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
260 ---------------------------
262 What: sk98lin network driver
264 Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
265 replaced by the skge driver.
266 Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
268 ---------------------------
270 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
272 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
273 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
274 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
275 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
276 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
278 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
279 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
280 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
282 ---------------------------
284 What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
286 Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
288 Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
290 ---------------------------
292 What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
294 Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
295 us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
296 been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
297 implementation are blocking more critical core networking
298 development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
299 enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
300 (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
301 handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
302 errors impossible too because they get called after we've
303 totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
304 This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
305 has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
306 this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
307 Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
309 ---------------------------