feature-removal-schedule.txt 3.9 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: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
  17. When: December 2005
  18. Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
  19. O_DIRECT can be used instead
  20. Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  21. ---------------------------
  22. What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
  23. When: April 2006
  24. Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
  25. Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
  26. vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
  27. VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
  28. drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
  29. are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
  30. So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
  31. people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
  32. of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
  33. Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
  34. ---------------------------
  35. What: IEEE1394 Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol driver,
  36. Connection Management Procedures driver
  37. When: November 2005
  38. Files: drivers/ieee1394/{amdtp,cmp}*
  39. Why: These are incomplete, have never worked, and are better implemented
  40. in userland via raw1394 (see http://freebob.sourceforge.net/ for
  41. example.)
  42. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  43. ---------------------------
  44. What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
  45. When: November 2005
  46. Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
  47. more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
  48. access anyway.
  49. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  50. ---------------------------
  51. What: i2c sysfs name change: in1_ref, vid deprecated in favour of cpu0_vid
  52. When: November 2005
  53. Files: drivers/i2c/chips/adm1025.c, drivers/i2c/chips/adm1026.c
  54. Why: Match the other drivers' name for the same function, duplicate names
  55. will be available until removal of old names.
  56. Who: Grant Coady <gcoady@gmail.com>
  57. ---------------------------
  58. What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
  59. When: November 2005
  60. Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
  61. Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
  62. normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
  63. infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
  64. control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
  65. unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
  66. PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
  67. difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
  68. handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
  69. pcmciautils package available at
  70. http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
  71. Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
  72. ---------------------------
  73. What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
  74. When: December 2005
  75. Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
  76. "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
  77. ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
  78. all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
  79. to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
  80. instead of the current 'libipq'.
  81. Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>