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 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>
18 ---------------------------
20 What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
22 Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
23 O_DIRECT can be used instead
24 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
26 ---------------------------
28 What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
30 Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
31 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
33 ---------------------------
35 What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
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>
48 ---------------------------
50 What: IEEE1394 Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol driver,
51 Connection Management Procedures driver
53 Files: drivers/ieee1394/{amdtp,cmp}*
54 Why: These are incomplete, have never worked, and are better implemented
55 in userland via raw1394 (see http://freebob.sourceforge.net/ for
57 Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
59 ---------------------------
61 What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
63 Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
64 more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
66 Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
68 ---------------------------
70 What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
72 Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
73 series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
74 means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
75 already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
76 Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
77 old calls, replacing to newer ones.
78 Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
79 communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
80 V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
81 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
83 ---------------------------
85 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(panic_timeout)
88 Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
89 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
91 ---------------------------
93 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource)
95 Files: kernel/resource.c
96 Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
97 Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
99 ---------------------------
101 What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
103 Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
104 Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
105 normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
106 infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
107 control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
108 unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
109 PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
110 difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
111 handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
112 pcmciautils package available at
113 http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
114 Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
116 ---------------------------
118 What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
120 Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
121 "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
122 ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
123 all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
124 to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
125 instead of the current 'libipq'.
126 Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
128 ---------------------------
130 What: EXPORT_SYMBOL(lookup_hash)
132 Why: Too low-level interface. Use lookup_one_len or lookup_create instead.
133 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
135 ---------------------------
137 What: START_ARRAY ioctl for md
139 Files: drivers/md/md.c
140 Why: Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed.
142 Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
144 ---------------------------
146 What: au1x00_uart driver
148 Why: The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences
149 between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange
150 brother on Alchemy SOCs. The loss of features is not considered an
152 Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>