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: old NCR53C9x driver
54 Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
55 driver can be ported over almost trivially.
56 Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
57 Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
59 ---------------------------
61 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
63 Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
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
98 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
99 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
100 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
101 prevents bugs and code duplication
102 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
104 ---------------------------
106 What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
108 Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
109 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
110 the option should just go away entirely.
111 Who: Arjan van de Ven
113 ---------------------------
115 What: eepro100 network driver
117 Why: replaced by the e100 driver
118 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
120 ---------------------------
122 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
123 When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
124 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
125 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
127 ---------------------------
129 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
130 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
131 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
133 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
134 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
135 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
137 ---------------------------
139 What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
141 Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
142 Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
143 possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
144 that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
145 subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
146 register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
147 any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
148 userspace filesystems, please contact the
149 linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
150 there will be glad to help you out.
151 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
153 ---------------------------
155 What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
157 Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
158 out of the signal namespace.
160 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
162 ---------------------------
164 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
166 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
168 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
169 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
170 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
172 ---------------------------
176 Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
177 model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
179 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
181 ---------------------------
183 What: i2c_adapter.list
185 Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
187 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
188 David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
190 ---------------------------
192 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
193 When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
194 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
195 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
197 ---------------------------
199 What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
201 Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
202 functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
203 difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
204 One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
205 speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
206 That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
207 capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
208 speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
209 non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
210 less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
212 Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
213 switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
214 to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
217 Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
219 ---------------------------
221 What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
223 Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
224 the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
225 and have no place being exposed to user-space.
227 For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
228 the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
229 and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
230 http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
231 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
233 ---------------------------
235 What: ACPI procfs interface
237 Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
238 in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
239 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
241 ---------------------------
243 What: /proc/acpi/button
245 Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
247 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
249 ---------------------------
251 What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
253 Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
254 Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
255 tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
256 much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
257 longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
259 The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
260 it loaded when they don't need/use it.
261 Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
263 ---------------------------
265 What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
267 Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
269 - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
271 - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
272 - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
273 execution of the function
274 Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
275 configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
277 Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
279 ---------------------------
281 What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
283 Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
284 I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
285 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
287 ---------------------------
289 What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
290 When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
291 Why: obsolete OSS drivers
292 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
294 ---------------------------
296 What: libata spindown skipping and warning
298 Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
299 down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
300 system halt (only synchronized caches).
301 Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
302 /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
303 spin down support is available.
304 Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
305 makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
306 device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
308 This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
309 be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
310 Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
312 ---------------------------
314 What: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
316 Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
317 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
319 ---------------------------
321 What: iptables SAME target
323 Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
324 Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
325 Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
326 Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
328 ---------------------------