This is an attempt to collect every entry that has ever been in
Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
This list is produced by
Robert Claypool <hackwrench@hotmail.com>
and as of 11/1/2005 is located at https://hackwrench.tripod.com/Linux/Docs/feature-removal.html
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: 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 <mailto: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: 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: 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>
---------------------------
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: /proc/sys/cpu/*, sysctl and /proc/cpufreq interfaces to cpufreq (2.4.x interfaces)
When: January 2005
Files: drivers/cpufreq/: cpufreq_userspace.c, proc_intf.c
Why: /proc/sys/cpu/* has been deprecated since inclusion of cpufreq into
the main kernel tree. It bloats /proc/ unnecessarily and doesn't work
well with the "governor"-based design of cpufreq.
/proc/cpufreq/* has also been deprecated for a long time and was only
meant for usage during 2.5. until the new sysfs-based interface became
ready. It has an inconsistent interface which doesn't work well with
userspace setting the frequency. The output from /proc/cpufreq/* can
be emulated using "cpufreq-info --proc" (cpufrequtils).
Both interfaces are superseded by the cpufreq interface in
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu%n/cpufreq/.
Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de>
---------------------------
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: register_ioctl32_conversion() / unregister_ioctl32_conversion()
When: April 2005
Why: Replaced by ->compat_ioctl in file_operations and other method
@@ -66,6 +74,14 @@ 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
Why: Deprecated in favour of the new ioc
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 <mailto: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>