---------------------------
-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: dev->power.power_state
+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: 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: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER
-When: January 2006
-Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.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: 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: old NCR53C9x driver
+When: October 2007
+Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
+ driver can be ported over almost trivially.
+Who: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
+ Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
---------------------------
What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
-When: July 2006
-Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
+When: December 2008
+Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
+Check: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
+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
already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
-Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(panic_timeout)
-When: April 2006
-Files: kernel/panic.c
-Why: No modular usage in the kernel.
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
-
----------------------------
-
-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>
+ Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via
+ v4l1-compat module.
+Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
---------------------------
---------------------------
-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: sys_sysctl
+When: September 2010
+Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL
+Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from
+ /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be
+ important performance wise.
+
+ Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel
+ bugs and security issues.
+
+ When I looked several months ago all I could find after
+ searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and
+ glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall.
+
+ The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user
+ space programs.
+
+ sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user
+ space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel.
+
+ For the last several months the policy has been no new binary
+ sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them.
+
+ Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so
+ properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a
+ 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill
+ them and end the pain.
+
+ In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with
+ in a piecewise fashion.
+
+Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
---------------------------
What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
When: August 2006
Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
+Check: kernel_thread
Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
---------------------------
-What: EXPORT_SYMBOL(lookup_hash)
-When: January 2006
-Why: Too low-level interface. Use lookup_one_len or lookup_create instead.
-Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
+What: eepro100 network driver
+When: January 2007
+Why: replaced by the e100 driver
+Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
---------------------------
-What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
-When: June 2006
-Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
- 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
- the option should just go away entirely.
-Who: Arjan van de Ven
+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: 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: 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: 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: ACPI procfs interface
+When: July 2008
+Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
+ ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
+ there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
+Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: eepro100 network driver
-When: January 2007
-Why: replaced by the e100 driver
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.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: 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: /proc/acpi/event
+When: February 2008
+Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
+ and netlink since 2.6.23.
+Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
---------------------------
-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.)
-Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
+What: libata spindown skipping and warning
+When: Dec 2008
+Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
+ down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
+ system halt (only synchronized caches).
+ Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
+ /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
+ spin down support is available.
+ Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
+ makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
+ device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
+ warn about it.
+ This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
+ be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
+Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
---------------------------
-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: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
+When: Jun 2008
+Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
+ platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
+ arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
+ tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
+ remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
+ that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
+ interested maintainer.
+Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
---------------------------
-What: Support for NEC DDB5074 and DDB5476 evaluation boards.
-When: June 2006
-Why: Board specific code doesn't build anymore since ~2.6.0 and no
- users have complained indicating there is no more need for these
- boards. This should really be considered a last call.
-Who: Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
+What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
+When: April 2010
+
+Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
+ location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
+ scripts, do not break.
+Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.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 (Why):
+ - include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_TOS.h ipt_tos.h header files
+ (superseded by xt_TOS/xt_tos target & match)
+
+ - "forwarding" header files like ipt_mac.h in
+ include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ and include/linux/netfilter_ipv6/
+
+ - xt_CONNMARK match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_CONNMARK match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_MARK target revisions 0 and 1
+ (superseded by xt_MARK match revision 2)
+
+ - xt_connmark match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_connmark match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_conntrack match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_conntrack match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_iprange match revision 0,
+ include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_iprange.h
+ (superseded by xt_iprange match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_mark match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_mark match revision 1)
+
+When: January 2009 or Linux 2.7.0, whichever comes first
+Why: Superseded by newer revisions or modules
+Who: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
---------------------------
+
+What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410
+When: July 2008
+Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability
+ and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware
+ are not provided by Broadcom anymore.
+Who: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: init_mm export
+When: 2.6.26
+Why: Not used in-tree. The current out-of-tree users used it to
+ work around problems in the CPA code which should be resolved
+ by now. One usecase was described to provide verification code
+ of the CPA operation. That's a good idea in general, but such
+ code / infrastructure should be in the kernel and not in some
+ out-of-tree driver.
+Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
+
+----------------------------
+
+What: usedac i386 kernel parameter
+When: 2.6.27
+Why: replaced by allowdac and no dac combination
+Who: Glauber Costa <gcosta@redhat.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: old style serial driver for ColdFire (CONFIG_SERIAL_COLDFIRE)
+When: 2.6.28
+Why: This driver still uses the old interface and has been replaced
+ by CONFIG_SERIAL_MCF.
+Who: Sebastian Siewior <sebastian@breakpoint.cc>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: /sys/o2cb symlink
+When: January 2010
+Why: /sys/fs/o2cb is the proper location for this information - /sys/o2cb
+ exists as a symlink for backwards compatibility for old versions of
+ ocfs2-tools. 2 years should be sufficient time to phase in new versions
+ which know to look in /sys/fs/o2cb.
+Who: ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDRS_NUM_OLD, SCTP_GET_PEER_ADDRS_OLD,
+ SCTP_GET_LOCAL_ADDRS_NUM_OLD, SCTP_GET_LOCAL_ADDRS_OLD
+When: June 2009
+Why: A newer version of the options have been introduced in 2005 that
+ removes the limitions of the old API. The sctp library has been
+ converted to use these new options at the same time. Any user
+ space app that directly uses the old options should convert to using
+ the new options.
+Who: Vlad Yasevich <vladislav.yasevich@hp.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: CONFIG_THERMAL_HWMON
+When: January 2009
+Why: This option was introduced just to allow older lm-sensors userspace
+ to keep working over the upgrade to 2.6.26. At the scheduled time of
+ removal fixed lm-sensors (2.x or 3.x) should be readily available.
+Who: Rene Herman <rene.herman@gmail.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: Code that is now under CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT_SYSFS
+ (in net/core/net-sysfs.c)
+When: After the only user (hal) has seen a release with the patches
+ for enough time, probably some time in 2010.
+Why: Over 1K .text/.data size reduction, data is available in other
+ ways (ioctls)
+Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
+
+---------------------------
+
+What: CONFIG_NF_CT_ACCT
+When: 2.6.29
+Why: Accounting can now be enabled/disabled without kernel recompilation.
+ Currently used only to set a default value for a feature that is also
+ controlled by a kernel/module/sysfs/sysctl parameter.
+Who: Krzysztof Piotr Oledzki <ole@ans.pl>
+
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff