feature-removal-schedule.txt 5.3 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: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
  23. When: January 2006
  24. Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
  25. Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  26. ---------------------------
  27. What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
  28. When: April 2006
  29. Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
  30. Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
  31. vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
  32. VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
  33. drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
  34. are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
  35. So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
  36. people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
  37. of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
  38. Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
  39. ---------------------------
  40. What: IEEE1394 Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol driver,
  41. Connection Management Procedures driver
  42. When: November 2005
  43. Files: drivers/ieee1394/{amdtp,cmp}*
  44. Why: These are incomplete, have never worked, and are better implemented
  45. in userland via raw1394 (see http://freebob.sourceforge.net/ for
  46. example.)
  47. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  48. ---------------------------
  49. What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
  50. When: November 2005
  51. Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
  52. more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
  53. access anyway.
  54. Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
  55. ---------------------------
  56. What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
  57. When: July 2006
  58. Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
  59. series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
  60. means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
  61. already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
  62. Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
  63. old calls, replacing to newer ones.
  64. Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
  65. communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
  66. V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
  67. Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
  68. ---------------------------
  69. What: i2c sysfs name change: in1_ref, vid deprecated in favour of cpu0_vid
  70. When: November 2005
  71. Files: drivers/i2c/chips/adm1025.c, drivers/i2c/chips/adm1026.c
  72. Why: Match the other drivers' name for the same function, duplicate names
  73. will be available until removal of old names.
  74. Who: Grant Coady <gcoady@gmail.com>
  75. ---------------------------
  76. What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(panic_timeout)
  77. When: April 2006
  78. Files: kernel/panic.c
  79. Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
  80. Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
  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. What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
  89. When: November 2005
  90. Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
  91. Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
  92. normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
  93. infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
  94. control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
  95. unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
  96. PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
  97. difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
  98. handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
  99. pcmciautils package available at
  100. http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
  101. Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
  102. ---------------------------
  103. What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
  104. When: December 2005
  105. Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
  106. "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
  107. ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
  108. all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
  109. to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
  110. instead of the current 'libipq'.
  111. Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
  112. ---------------------------
  113. What: EXPORT_SYMBOL(lookup_hash)
  114. When: January 2006
  115. Why: Too low-level interface. Use lookup_one_len or lookup_create instead.
  116. Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>