---------------------------
-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: MXSER
+When: December 2007
+Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet
+ and remove it.
+Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
---------------------------
-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: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
+When: October 2007
+Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
+ not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
+ by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
+ in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
+ (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
+Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
+ Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
---------------------------
-What: drivers that were depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
- (config options already removed)
-When: before 2.6.19
-Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
+What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
+ dev->power.power_state
+ dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
+When: July 2007
+Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
+ driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
+ system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
+ different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
+ inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
+ use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
+ interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
+Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
---------------------------
-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: 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: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
-When: November 2006
-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@modernduck.com>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: sbp2: module parameter "force_inquiry_hack"
-When: July 2006
-Why: Superceded by parameter "workarounds". Both parameters are meant to be
- used ad-hoc and for single devices only, i.e. not in modprobe.conf,
- therefore the impact of this feature replacement should be low.
-Who: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
+When: June 2007
+Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
+ Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
+ (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
+ raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
+Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
---------------------------
What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
-When: July 2006
+When: December 2006
Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
---------------------------
-What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(insert_resource)
-When: April 2006
-Files: kernel/resource.c
-Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
-
----------------------------
-
What: PCMCIA control ioctl (needed for pcmcia-cs [cardmgr, cardctl])
When: November 2005
Files: drivers/pcmcia/: pcmcia_ioctl.c
---------------------------
-What: ip_queue and ip6_queue (old ipv4-only and ipv6-only netfilter queue)
-When: December 2005
-Why: This interface has been obsoleted by the new layer3-independent
- "nfnetlink_queue". The Kernel interface is compatible, so the old
- ip[6]tables "QUEUE" targets still work and will transparently handle
- all packets into nfnetlink queue number 0. Userspace users will have
- to link against API-compatible library on top of libnfnetlink_queue
- instead of the current 'libipq'.
-Who: Harald Welte <laforge@netfilter.org>
-
----------------------------
-
What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
When: August 2006
Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
---------------------------
-What: START_ARRAY ioctl for md
-When: July 2006
-Files: drivers/md/md.c
-Why: Not reliable by design - can fail when most needed.
- Alternatives exist
-Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
+What: eepro100 network driver
+When: January 2007
+Why: replaced by the e100 driver
+Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
---------------------------
-What: au1x00_uart driver
-When: January 2006
-Why: The 8250 serial driver now has the ability to deal with the differences
- between the standard 8250 family of UARTs and their slightly strange
- brother on Alchemy SOCs. The loss of features is not considered an
- issue.
-Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
+What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
+When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
+Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
+Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
---------------------------
-What: eepro100 network driver
-When: January 2007
-Why: replaced by the e100 driver
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
+What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
+ (temporary transition config option provided until then)
+ The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
+When: before 2.6.19
+Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
+ and are often a sign of "wrong API"
+Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: pci_module_init(driver)
-When: January 2007
-Why: Is replaced by pci_register_driver(pci_driver).
-Who: Richard Knutsson <ricknu-0@student.ltu.se> and Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
+What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
+When: February 2008
+Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
+Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
+ possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
+ that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
+ subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
+ register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
+ any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
+ userspace filesystems, please contact the
+ linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
+ there will be glad to help you out.
+Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
---------------------------
-What: Usage of invalid timevals in setitimer
-When: March 2007
-Why: POSIX requires to validate timevals in the setitimer call. This
- was never done by Linux. The invalid (e.g. negative timevals) were
- silently converted to more or less random timeouts and intervals.
- Until the removal a per boot limited number of warnings is printed
- and the timevals are sanitized.
+What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
+When: September 2007
+Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
+ out of the signal namespace.
Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
---------------------------
-What: I2C interface of the it87 driver
-When: January 2007
-Why: The ISA interface is faster and should be always available. The I2C
- probing is also known to cause trouble in at least one case (see
- bug #5889.)
+What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
+When: October 2008
+Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
+ inconsistent.
+ Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
+ devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
+Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: i2c-isa
+When: December 2006
+Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
+ model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
+ drivers.
Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
---------------------------
-What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(tasklist_lock)
-When: August 2006
-Files: kernel/fork.c
-Why: tasklist_lock protects the kernel internal task list. Modules have
- no business looking at it, and all instances in drivers have been due
- to use of too-lowlevel APIs. Having this symbol exported prevents
- moving to more scalable locking schemes for the task list.
-Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
+What: i2c_adapter.list
+When: July 2007
+Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
+ core.
+Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
+ David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
---------------------------
-What: mount/umount uevents
-When: February 2007
-Why: These events are not correct, and do not properly let userspace know
- when a file system has been mounted or unmounted. Userspace should
- poll the /proc/mounts file instead to detect this properly.
-Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
+What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
+When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
+Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
+Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
---------------------------
-What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
-When: Febuary 2008
-Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
-Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
- possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
- that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
- subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
- register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
- any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
- userspace filesystems, please contact the
- linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
- there will be glad to help you out.
-Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
+What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
+When: December 2006
+Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
+ functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
+ difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
+ One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
+ speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
+ That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
+ capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
+ speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
+ non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
+ less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
+ going out of sync.
+ Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
+ switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
+ to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
+ date.
+
+Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
+When: 2.6.21
+Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
+ the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
+ and have no place being exposed to user-space.
+
+ For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
+ the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
+ and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
+ http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
+Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: ACPI procfs interface
+When: July 2007
+Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
+ in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
+Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: find_trylock_page
-When: January 2007
-Why: The interface no longer has any callers left in the kernel. It
- is an odd interface (compared with other find_*_page functions), in
- that it does not take a refcount to the page, only the page lock.
- It should be replaced with find_get_page or find_lock_page if possible.
- This feature removal can be reevaluated if users of the interface
- cannot cleanly use something else.
-Who: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
+What: /proc/acpi/button
+When: August 2007
+Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
+ since 2.6.20.
+Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
---------------------------
+
+What: sk98lin network driver
+When: July 2007
+Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
+ replaced by the skge driver.
+Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
+When: Oct 2007
+Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
+Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
+ tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
+ much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
+ longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
+ use tslib by now.
+ The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
+ it loaded when they don't need/use it.
+Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: i8xx_tco watchdog driver
+When: in 2.6.22
+Why: the i8xx_tco watchdog driver has been replaced by the iTCO_wdt
+ watchdog driver.
+Who: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
+When: in 2.6.23
+Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
+ us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
+ been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
+ implementation are blocking more critical core networking
+ development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
+ enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
+ (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
+ handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
+ errors impossible too because they get called after we've
+ totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
+ This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
+ has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
+ this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
+Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
+When: December 2007
+Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
+ problems:
+ - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
+ interrupt handler
+ - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
+ - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
+ execution of the function
+ Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
+ configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
+ themselves.
+Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
+When: September 2007
+Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
+ I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
+Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
+When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
+Why: obsolete OSS drivers
+Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
+
+---------------------------
+
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff