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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: Legacy /proc/pci interface (PCI_LEGACY_PROC)
155 When: March 2006
156 Why: deprecated since 2.5.53 in favor of lspci(8)
157 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
158
159 ---------------------------
160
161 What: pci_module_init(driver)
162 When: January 2007
163 Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
164 Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
165
166 ---------------------------
167
168 What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
169 When: January 2007
170 Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
171 probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
172 bug #5889.)
173 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
174
175 ---------------------------
176
177 What: mount/umount uevents
178 When: February 2007
179 Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
180 when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
181 poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
182 Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
183
184 ---------------------------
185
186 What: Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards.
187 When: June 2006
188 Why: Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no
189 users have complained indicating there is no more need for these
190 boards. This should really be considered a last call.
191 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>