I noticed that many feature removal schedule marked in this file have
expired, so please update information:
1. if the feature has been removed, please remove it from this file;
2. if it does not, please update the schedule date;
---
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: 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 <[email protected]>
---------------------------
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 <[email protected]>
Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
---------------------------
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 <[email protected]>
---------------------------
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
prevents bugs and code duplication
Who: Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
---------------------------
What: eepro100 network driver
When: January 2007
Why: replaced by the e100 driver
Who: Adrian Bunk <[email protected]>
---------------------------
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 <[email protected]>
---------------------------
What: vm_ops.nopage
When: Soon, provided in-kernel callers have been converted
Why: This interface is replaced by vm_ops.fault, but it has been around
forever, is used by a lot of drivers, and doesn't cost much to
maintain.
Who: Nick Piggin <[email protected]>
---------------------------
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 <[email protected]>
---------------------------
What: sk98lin network driver
When: Feburary 2008
Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
replaced by the skge driver.
Who: Stephen Hemminger <[email protected]>
--
Denis Cheng
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 09:22:29PM +0800, rae l wrote:
> 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 <[email protected]>
> Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
This one is long gone, probably just needs a doc patch.
>
> 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
> prevents bugs and code duplication
> Who: Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
We still have in-kernel users of this one. Feel free to send a patch
to change it to "once the last in-tree user is gone"
On Thu, 2008-03-20 at 14:25 +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 09:22:29PM +0800, rae l wrote:
> > 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 <[email protected]>
> > Christoph Hellwig <[email protected]>
>
> This one is long gone, probably just needs a doc patch.
>
I sent a patch to James Bottomley after the removal a few weeks ago, he
said he wanted the message to stay for a release in case someone goes
looking for the driver.
Harvey
On Thu 2008-03-20 21:22:29, rae l wrote:
> I noticed that many feature removal schedule marked in this file have
> expired, so please update information:
> 1. if the feature has been removed, please remove it from this file;
> 2. if it does not, please update the schedule date;
> 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 <[email protected]>
Feel free to help killing remaining power_state users, then it can
disappear.
I won't update the date: it is in past to remind people that it should
have been killed already.
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html