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linux/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
Andi Kleen 8e9073ed02 Deprecate a.out ELF interpreters 
The Linux ELF loader is quite complicated and messy code (that could
probably need a rewrite, but that's a different chapter).  One particular
messy part in it is the support for non ELF a.out ld.sos.  This was
originally added to make transition from a.out to ELF easier because an
a.out ELF ld.so could be still build using an older a.out toolkit.  But by
now that should be fully obsolete and removing it would clean up
binfmt_elf.c up a bit.

I propose to deprecate this support and remove for 2.6.25.

Drawback is that someone still runs their system with a.out ld.so
they would need to update the ld.so when updating to a new kernel.

This patch just adds an entry to the deprecation file and a printk
warning users.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: better warning message]
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-17 08:42:51 -07:00

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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: December 2006
Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h
Check: include/linux/video_decoder.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.
Newer drivers should use v4l_compat_translate_ioctl function to handle
old calls, replacing to newer ones.
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: 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: 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 <ak@suse.de>
---------------------------
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 <hch@lst.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: 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: 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: 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 <npiggin@suse.de>
---------------------------
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: 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_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: 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: 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: /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: /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-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: '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 <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
---------------------------
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>
---------------------------
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: Legacy RTC drivers (under drivers/i2c/chips)
When: November 2007
Why: Obsolete. We have a RTC subsystem with better drivers.
Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
---------------------------
What: iptables SAME target
When: 1.1. 2008
Files: net/ipv4/netfilter/ipt_SAME.c, include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_SAME.h
Why: Obsolete for multiple years now, NAT core provides the same behaviour.
Unfixable broken wrt. 32/64 bit cleanness.
Who: Patrick McHardy <kaber@trash.net>
---------------------------
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: mthca driver's MSI support
When: January 2008
Files: drivers/infiniband/hw/mthca/*.[ch]
Why: All mthca hardware also supports MSI-X, which provides
strictly more functionality than MSI. So there is no point in
having both MSI-X and MSI support in the driver.
Who: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
---------------------------
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 <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
---------------------------
What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
When: April 2008
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: shaper network driver
When: January 2008
Files: drivers/net/shaper.c, include/linux/if_shaper.h
Why: This driver has been marked obsolete for many years.
It was only designed to work on lower speed links and has design
flaws that lead to machine crashes. The qdisc infrastructure in
2.4 or later kernels, provides richer features and is more robust.
Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
---------------------------
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