The following is a list of files and features that are going to be
removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what
exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing
the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also
be removed from this file.
---------------------------
What: devfs
When: July 2005
Files: fs/devfs/*, include/linux/devfs_fs*.h and assorted devfs
function calls throughout the kernel tree
Why: It has been unmaintained for a number of years, has unfixable
races, contains a naming policy within the kernel that is
against the LSB, and can be replaced by using udev.
Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
---------------------------
What: ACPI S4bios support
When: May 2005
Why: Noone uses it, and it probably does not work, anyway. swsusp is
faster, more reliable, and people are actually using it.
Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
---------------------------
What: PCI Name Database (CONFIG_PCI_NAMES)
When: July 2005
Why: It bloats the kernel unnecessarily, and is handled by userspace better
(pciutils supports it.) Will eliminate the need to try to keep the
pci.ids file in sync with the sf.net database all of the time.
Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
---------------------------
What: io_remap_page_range() (macro or function)
When: September 2005
Why: Replaced by io_remap_pfn_range() which allows more memory space
addressabilty (by using a pfn) and supports sparc & sparc64
iospace as part of the pfn.
Who: Randy Dunlap <rddunlap@osdl.org>
---------------------------
What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
When: December 2005
Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
O_DIRECT can be used instead
Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
---------------------------
What: register_ioctl32_conversion() / unregister_ioctl32_conversion()
When: April 2005
Why: Replaced by ->compat_ioctl in file_operations and other method
vecors.
Who: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
---------------------------
What: RCU API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
When: April 2006
Files: include/linux/rcupdate.h, kernel/rcupdate.c
Why: Outside of Linux, the only implementations of anything even
vaguely resembling RCU that I am aware of are in DYNIX/ptx,
VM/XA, Tornado, and K42. I do not expect anyone to port binary
drivers or kernel modules from any of these, since the first two
are owned by IBM and the last two are open-source research OSes.
So these will move to GPL after a grace period to allow
people, who might be using implementations that I am not aware
of, to adjust to this upcoming change.
Who: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
---------------------------
What: remove verify_area()
When: July 2006
Files: Various uaccess.h headers.
Why: Deprecated and redundant. access_ok() should be used instead.
Who: Jesper Juhl <juhl-lkml@dif.dk>
---------------------------
What: IEEE1394 Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol driver,
Connection Management Procedures driver
When: November 2005
Files: drivers/ieee1394/{amdtp,cmp}*
Why: These are incomplete, have never worked, and are better implemented
in userland via raw1394 (see http://freebob.sourceforge.net/ for
example.)
Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
---------------------------
What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
When: November 2005
Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioctl-based rawiso interface, which is
more efficient. You should really be using libraw1394 for raw1394
access anyway.
Who: Jody McIntyre <scjody@steamballoon.com>
---------------------------
What: register_serial/unregister_serial
When: September 2005
Why: This interface does not allow serial ports to be registered against
a struct device, and as such does not allow correct power management
of such ports. 8250-based ports should use serial8250_register_port
and serial8250_unregister_port, or platform devices instead.
Who: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
---------------------------
What: i2c sysfs name change: in1_ref, vid deprecated in favour of cpu0_vid
When: November 2005
Files: drivers/i2c/chips/adm1025.c, drivers/i2c/chips/adm1026.c
Why: Match the other drivers' name for the same function, duplicate names
will be available until removal of old names.
Who: Grant Coady <gcoady@gmail.com>
---------------------------
What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
When: November 2005
Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
Why: With the 16-bit PCMCIA subsystem now behaving (almost) like a
normal hotpluggable bus, and with it using the default kernel
infrastructure (hotplug, driver core, sysfs) keeping the PCMCIA
control ioctl needed by cardmgr and cardctl from pcmcia-cs is
unnecessary, and makes further cleanups and integration of the
PCMCIA subsystem into the Linux kernel device driver model more
difficult. The features provided by cardmgr and cardctl are either
handled by the kernel itself now or are available in the new
pcmciautils package available at
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/pcmcia/
Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
