feature-removal-schedule.txt 4.2 KB

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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. What: devfs
  8. When: July 2005
  9. Files: fs/devfs/*, include/linux/devfs_fs*.h and assorted devfs
  10. function calls throughout the kernel tree
  11. Why: It has been unmaintained for a number of years, has unfixable
  12. races, contains a naming policy within the kernel that is
  13. against the LSB, and can be replaced by using udev.
  14. Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
  15. ---------------------------
  16. What: io_remap_page_range() (macro or function)
  17. When: September 2005
  18. Why: Replaced by io_remap_pfn_range() which allows more memory space
  19. addressabilty (by using a pfn) and supports sparc & sparc64
  20. iospace as part of the pfn.
  21. Who: Randy Dunlap <rddunlap@osdl.org>
  22. ---------------------------
  23. What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
  24. When: December 2005
  25. Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
  26. O_DIRECT can be used instead
  27. Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  28. ---------------------------
  29. What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
  30. When: April 2006
  31. Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
  32. Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
  33. vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
  34. VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
  35. drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
  36. are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
  37. So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
  38. people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
  39. of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
  40. Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
  41. ---------------------------
  42. What: IEEE1394 Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol driver,
  43. Connection Management Procedures driver
  44. When: November 2005
  45. Files: drivers/ieee1394/{amdtp,cmp}*
  46. Why: These are incomplete, have never worked, and are better implemented
  47. in userland via raw1394 (see http://freebob.sourceforge.net/ for
  48. example.)
  49. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  50. ---------------------------
  51. What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
  52. When: November 2005
  53. Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
  54. more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
  55. access anyway.
  56. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  57. ---------------------------
  58. What: i2c sysfs name change: in1_ref, vid deprecated in favour of cpu0_vid
  59. When: November 2005
  60. Files: drivers/i2c/chips/adm1025.c, drivers/i2c/chips/adm1026.c
  61. Why: Match the other drivers' name for the same function, duplicate names
  62. will be available until removal of old names.
  63. Who: Grant Coady <gcoady@gmail.com>
  64. ---------------------------
  65. What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
  66. When: November 2005
  67. Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
  68. Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
  69. normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
  70. infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
  71. control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
  72. unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
  73. PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
  74. difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
  75. handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
  76. pcmciautils package available at
  77. http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
  78. Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
  79. ---------------------------
  80. What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
  81. When: December 2005
  82. Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
  83. "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
  84. ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
  85. all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
  86. to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
  87. instead of the current 'libipq'.
  88. Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>