linux/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt

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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: 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: 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: PCI Name Database (CONFIG_PCI_NAMES)
When: July 2005
Why: It bloats the kernel unnecessarily, and is handled by userspace better
(pciutils supports it.) Will eliminate the need to try to keep the
pci.ids file in sync with the sf.net database all of the time.
Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
---------------------------
What: io_remap_page_range() (macro or function)
When: September 2005
Why: Replaced by io_remap_pfn_range() which allows more memory space
addressabilty (by using a pfn) and supports sparc & sparc64
iospace as part of the pfn.
Who: Randy Dunlap <rddunlap@osdl.org>
---------------------------
What: register_ioctl32_conversion() / unregister_ioctl32_conversion()
When: April 2005
Why: Replaced by ->compat_ioctl in file_operations and other method
vecors.
Who: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.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>