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:   devfs
  10 When:   July 2005
  11 Files:  fs/devfs/*, include/linux/devfs_fs*.h and assorted devfs
  12         function calls throughout the kernel tree
  13 Why:    It has been unmaintained for a number of years, has unfixable
  14         races, contains a naming policy within the kernel that is
  15         against the LSB, and can be replaced by using udev.
  16 Who:    Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
  17
  18 ---------------------------
  19
  20 What:   RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
  21 When:   December 2005
  22 Why:    declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
  23         O_DIRECT can be used instead
  24 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  25
  26 ---------------------------
  27
  28 What:   drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
  29 When:   January 2006
  30 Why:    OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
  31 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  32
  33 ---------------------------
  34
  35 What:   RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
  36 When:   April 2006
  37 Files:  include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
  38 Why:    Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
  39         vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
  40         VM/XA, Tornado, and K42.  I do not expect anyone to port binary
  41         drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
  42         are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
  43         So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
  44         people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
  45         of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
  46 Who:    Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
  47
  48 ---------------------------
  49
  50 What:   raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
  51 When:   November 2005
  52 Why:    Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
  53         more efficient.  You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
  54         access anyway.
  55 Who:    Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  56
  57 ---------------------------
  58
  59 What:   Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
  60 When:   July 2006
  61 Why:    V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
  62         series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
  63         means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
  64         already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
  65         Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
  66         old calls, replacing to newer ones.
  67         Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
  68         communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
  69         V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
  70 Who:    Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
  71
  72 ---------------------------
  73
  74 What:   remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(panic_timeout)
  75 When:   April 2006
  76 Files:  kernel/panic.c
  77 Why:    No modular usage in the kernel.
  78 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  79
  80 ---------------------------
  81
  82 What:   remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource)
  83 When:   April 2006
  84 Files:  kernel/resource.c
  85 Why:    No modular usage in the kernel.
  86 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  87
  88 ---------------------------
  89
  90 What:   PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
  91 When:   November 2005
  92 Files:  drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
  93 Why:    With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
  94         normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
  95         infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
  96         control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
  97         unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
  98         PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
  99         difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
 100         handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
 101         pcmciautils package available at
 102         http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
 103 Who:    Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
 104
 105 ---------------------------
 106
 107 What:   ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
 108 When:   December 2005
 109 Why:    This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
 110         "nfnetlink_queue".  The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
 111         ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
 112         all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0.  Userspace users will have
 113         to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
 114         instead of the current 'libipq'.
 115 Who:    Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
 116
 117 ---------------------------
 118
 119 What:   EXPORT_SYMBOL(lookup_hash)
 120 When:   January 2006
 121 Why:    Too low-level interface.  Use lookup_one_len or lookup_create instead.
 122 Who:    Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
 123
 124 ---------------------------
 125
 126 What:   CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
 127 When:   June 2006
 128 Why:    Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
 129         2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
 130         the option should just go away entirely.
 131 Who:    Arjan van de Ven
 132
 133 ---------------------------
 134
 135 What:   START_ARRAY ioctl for md
 136 When:   July 2006
 137 Files:  drivers/md/md.c
 138 Why:    Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed.
 139         Alternatives exist
 140 Who:    NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
 141
 142 ---------------------------
 143
 144 What:   au1x00_uart driver
 145 When:   January 2006
 146 Why:    The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences
 147         between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange
 148         brother on Alchemy SOCs.  The loss of features is not considered an
 149         issue.
 150 Who:    Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
 151
 152 ---------------------------
 153
 154 What:   eepro100 network driver
 155 When:   January 2007
 156 Why:    replaced by the e100 driver
 157 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 158
 159 ---------------------------
 160
 161 What:   Legacy /proc/pci interface (PCI_LEGACY_PROC)
 162 When:   March 2006
 163 Why:    deprecated since 2.5.53 in favor of lspci(8)
 164 Who:    Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
 165
 166 ---------------------------
 167
 168 What:   pci_module_init(driver)
 169 When:   January 2007
 170 Why:    Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
 171 Who:    Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
 172
 173 ---------------------------
 174
 175 What:   I2C interface of the it87 driver
 176 When:   January 2007
 177 Why:    The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
 178         probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
 179         bug #5889.)
 180 Who:    Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
 181
 182 ---------------------------
 183
 184 What:   mount/umount uevents
 185 When:   February 2007
 186 Why:    These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
 187         when a file system has been mounted or unmounted.  Userspace should
 188         poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
 189 Who:    Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
 190
 191 ---------------------------
 192
 193 What:   Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards.
 194 When:   June 2006
 195 Why:    Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no
 196         users have complained indicating there is no more need for these
 197         boards.  This should really be considered a last call.
 198 Who:    Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
 199
 200 ---------------------------
 201
 202 What:   USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
 203 When:   Febuary 2008
 204 Files:  include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
 205 Why:    The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
 206         possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
 207         that operate as fast as the USB bus allows.  Because of this, the USB
 208         subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
 209         register with it, after this grace period is over.  If anyone needs
 210         any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
 211         userspace filesystems, please contact the
 212         linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
 213         there will be glad to help you out.
 214 Who:    Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
 215
 216 ---------------------------