Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt

   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
   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
  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
  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
  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
  52 What:   raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
  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>
  59
  60 ---------------------------
  61
  62 What:   old NCR53C9x driver
  63 When:   October 2007
  64 Why:    Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver.  Actual low-level
  65         driver can ported over almost trivially.
  66 Who:    David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
  67         Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
  68
  69 ---------------------------
  70
  71 What:   Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
  72 When:   December 2006
  73 Why:    V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
  74         series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
  75         means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
  76         already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
  77         Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
  78         old calls, replacing to newer ones.
  79         Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
  80         communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
  81         V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
  82 Who:    Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
  83
  84 ---------------------------
  85
  86 What:   PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
  87 When:   November 2005
  88 Files:  drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
  89 Why:    With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
  90         normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
  91         infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
  92         control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
  93         unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
  94         PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
  95         difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
  96         handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
  97         pcmciautils package available at
  98         http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
  99 Who:    Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
 100
 101 ---------------------------
 102
 103 What:   remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
 104 When:   August 2006
 105 Files:  arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
 106 Why:    kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail.  Drivers should
 107         use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
 108         implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
 109         prevents bugs and code duplication
 110 Who:    Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
 111
 112 ---------------------------
 113
 114 What:   CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
 115 When:   June 2006
 116 Why:    Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
 117         2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
 118         the option should just go away entirely.
 119 Who:    Arjan van de Ven
 120
 121 ---------------------------
 122
 123 What:   eepro100 network driver
 124 When:   January 2007
 125 Why:    replaced by the e100 driver
 126 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 127
 128 ---------------------------
 129
 130 What:  drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
 131 When:  options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
 132 Why:   OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
 133 Who:   Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 134
 135 ---------------------------
 136
 137 What:   Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
 138         (temporary transition config option provided until then)
 139         The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
 140 When:   before 2.6.19
 141 Why:    Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
 142         and are often a sign of "wrong API"
 143 Who:    Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
 144
 145 ---------------------------
 146
 147 What:   USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
 148 When:   February 2008
 149 Files:  include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
 150 Why:    The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
 151         possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
 152         that operate as fast as the USB bus allows.  Because of this, the USB
 153         subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
 154         register with it, after this grace period is over.  If anyone needs
 155         any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
 156         userspace filesystems, please contact the
 157         linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
 158         there will be glad to help you out.
 159 Who:    Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
 160
 161 ---------------------------
 162
 163 What:   Interrupt only SA_* flags
 164 When:   September 2007
 165 Why:    The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
 166         out of the signal namespace.
 167
 168 Who:    Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
 169
 170 ---------------------------
 171
 172 What:   PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
 173 When:   October 2008
 174 Why:    The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
 175         inconsistent.
 176         Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
 177         devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
 178 Who:    Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
 179
 180 ---------------------------
 181
 182 What:   i2c-isa
 183 When:   December 2006
 184 Why:    i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
 185         model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
 186         drivers.
 187 Who:    Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
 188
 189 ---------------------------
 190
 191 What:   i2c_adapter.list
 192 When:   July 2007
 193 Why:    Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
 194         core.
 195 Who:    Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
 196         David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
 197
 198 ---------------------------
 199
 200 What:  drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
 201 When:  options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
 202 Why:   OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
 203 Who:   Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 204
 205 ---------------------------
 206
 207 What:   ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
 208 When:   December 2006
 209 Why:    Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
 210         functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
 211         difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
 212         One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
 213         speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
 214         That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
 215         capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
 216         speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
 217         non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
 218         less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
 219         going out of sync.
 220         Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
 221         switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
 222         to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
 223         date.
 224
 225 Who:    Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
 226
 227 ---------------------------
 228
 229 What:   /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
 230 When:   2.6.21
 231 Why:    The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
 232         the BIOS.  The device names are completely arbitrary
 233         and have no place being exposed to user-space.
 234
 235         For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
 236         the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
 237         and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
 238         http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
 239 Who:    Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
 240
 241 ---------------------------
 242
 243 What:   ACPI procfs interface
 244 When:   July 2007
 245 Why:    After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
 246         in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
 247 Who:    Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
 248
 249 ---------------------------
 250
 251 What:   /proc/acpi/button
 252 When:   August 2007
 253 Why:    /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
 254         since 2.6.20.
 255 Who:    Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
 256
 257 ---------------------------
 258
 259 What:   sk98lin network driver
 260 When:   July 2007
 261 Why:    In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
 262         replaced by the skge driver.
 263 Who:    Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
 264
 265 ---------------------------
 266
 267 What:   Compaq touchscreen device emulation
 268 When:   Oct 2007
 269 Files:  drivers/input/tsdev.c
 270 Why:    The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
 271         tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
 272         much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
 273         longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
 274         use tslib by now.
 275         The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
 276         it loaded when they don't need/use it.
 277 Who:    Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
 278
 279 ---------------------------
 280
 281 What:   i8xx_tco watchdog driver
 282 When:   in 2.6.22
 283 Why:    the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
 284         watchdog driver.
 285 Who:    Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
 286
 287 ---------------------------
 288
 289 What:   Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
 290 When:   in 2.6.23
 291 Why:    Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
 292         us with no maintainer and lots of bugs.  The code should not have
 293         been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
 294         implementation are blocking more critical core networking
 295         development.  It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
 296         enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
 297         (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
 298         handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
 299         errors impossible too because they get called after we've
 300         totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
 301         This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
 302         has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
 303         this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
 304 Who:    David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
 305
 306 ---------------------------
 307
 308 What:   read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
 309 When:   December 2007
 310 Why:    These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
 311         problems:
 312         - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
 313           interrupt handler
 314         - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
 315         - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
 316           execution of the function
 317         Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
 318         configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
 319         themselves.
 320 Who:    Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
 321
 322 ---------------------------
 323
 324 What:   i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
 325 When:   September 2007
 326 Why:    Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
 327         I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
 328 Who:    Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
 329
 330 ---------------------------
 331
 332 What:  drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
 333 When:  options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
 334 Why:   obsolete OSS drivers
 335 Who:   Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 336
 337 ---------------------------
 338