The following are entries in feature-removal-schedule.txt that have
come due. Please change the subject when replying to specific items.
Where I've gotten responses from the named person in the file, I've
included their comment.
---------------------------
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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Jiri says probably not for 2.6.25, likely 2.6.26
Patch in mm:
http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/char-mxser-remove-it.patch
---------------------------
Ping?
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]>
DaveM: Likely one more release with this, perhaps delete 2.6.26
---------------------------
Ping?
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: a.out interpreter support for ELF executables
When: 2.6.25
Files: fs/binfmt_elf.c
Why: Using a.out interpreters for ELF executables was a feature for
transition from a.out to ELF. But now it is unlikely to be still
needed anymore and removing it would simplify the hairy ELF
loader code.
Who: Andi Kleen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Patch in mm.
---------------------------
Ping?
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: 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
Patch submitted to Arjan, maybe 2.6.25?
---------------------------
Ping?
What: eepro100 network driver
When: January 2007
Why: replaced by the e100 driver
Who: Adrian Bunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------
Ping? Possibly remove this from feature-removal-schedule?
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]>
---------------------------
Ping?
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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list, and the developers
there will be glad to help you out.
Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------
Ping?
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]>
---------------------------
Should this be removed?
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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
LenB: we try to remove them, but every time we do, people scream.
---------------------------
Should this be removed?
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]>
LenB: we try to remove them, but every time we do, people scream.
---------------------------
What: 'time' kernel boot parameter
When: January 2008
Why: replaced by 'printk.time=<value>' so that printk timestamps can be
enabled or disabled as needed
Who: Randy Dunlap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
RDunlap: Adrian Bunk sent a patch for it. I acked it.
Andrew merged it into -mm according to a commits email.
---------------------------
Ping, although Adrian is pretty good about this.
What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
Why: obsolete OSS drivers
Who: Adrian Bunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------
Ping?
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]>
Cheers,
Harve
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