kernel/linux.git/drivers/char/Makefile, branch v6.12.80

arch: Remove Itanium (IA-64) architecture

2023-09-11T08:13:17+00:00

The Itanium architecture is obsolete, and an informal survey [0] reveals that any residual use of Itanium hardware in production is mostly HP-UX or OpenVMS based. The use of Linux on Itanium appears to be limited to enthusiasts that occasionally boot a fresh Linux kernel to see whether things are still working as intended, and perhaps to churn out some distro packages that are rarely used in practice. None of the original companies behind Itanium still produce or support any hardware or software for the architecture, and it is listed as 'Orphaned' in the MAINTAINERS file, as apparently, none of the engineers that contributed on behalf of those companies (nor anyone else, for that matter) have been willing to support or maintain the architecture upstream or even be responsible for applying the odd fix. The Intel firmware team removed all IA-64 support from the Tianocore/EDK2 reference implementation of EFI in 2018. (Itanium is the original architecture for which EFI was developed, and the way Linux supports it deviates significantly from other architectures.) Some distros, such as Debian and Gentoo, still maintain [unofficial] ia64 ports, but many have dropped support years ago. While the argument is being made [1] that there is a 'for the common good' angle to being able to build and run existing projects such as the Grid Community Toolkit [2] on Itanium for interoperability testing, the fact remains that none of those projects are known to be deployed on Linux/ia64, and very few people actually have access to such a system in the first place. Even if there were ways imaginable in which Linux/ia64 could be put to good use today, what matters is whether anyone is actually doing that, and this does not appear to be the case. There are no emulators widely available, and so boot testing Itanium is generally infeasible for ordinary contributors. GCC still supports IA-64 but its compile farm [3] no longer has any IA-64 machines. GLIBC would like to get rid of IA-64 [4] too because it would permit some overdue code cleanups. In summary, the benefits to the ecosystem of having IA-64 be part of it are mostly theoretical, whereas the maintenance overhead of keeping it supported is real. So let's rip off the band aid, and remove the IA-64 arch code entirely. This follows the timeline proposed by the Debian/ia64 maintainer [5], which removes support in a controlled manner, leaving IA-64 in a known good state in the most recent LTS release. Other projects will follow once the kernel support is removed. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAMj1kXFCMh_578jniKpUtx_j8ByHnt=s7S+yQ+vGbKt9ud7+kQ@mail.gmail.com/ [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/0075883c-7c51-00f5-2c2d-5119c1820410@web.de/ [2] https://gridcf.org/gct-docs/latest/index.html [3] https://cfarm.tetaneutral.net/machines/list/ [4] https://lore.kernel.org/all/87bkiilpc4.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de/ [5] https://lore.kernel.org/all/ff58a3e76e5102c94bb5946d99187b358def688a.camel@physik.fu-berlin.de/ Acked-by: Tony Luck Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel

char: pcmcia: remove all the drivers

2023-03-09T16:30:27+00:00

These char PCMCIA drivers are buggy[1] and receive only minimal care. It was concluded[2], that we should try to remove most pcmcia drivers completely. Let's start with these char broken one. Note that I also removed a UAPI header: include/uapi/linux/cm4000_cs.h. I found only coccinelle tests mentioning some ioctl constants from that file. But they are not actually used. Anyway, should someone complain, we may reintroduce the header (or its parts). [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/f41c2765-80e0-48bc-b1e4-8cfd3230fd4a@www.fastmail.com/ [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/c5b39544-a4fb-4796-a046-0b9be9853787@app.fastmail.com/ Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby (SUSE) Cc: "Hyunwoo Kim" Cc: Harald Welte Cc: Lubomir Rintel Cc: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman Acked-by: Dominik Brodowski Reviewed-by: Arnd Bergmann Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230222092302.6348-2-jirislaby@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

char: remove VR41XX related char driver

2022-07-28T14:12:33+00:00

Commit d3164e2f3b0a ("MIPS: Remove VR41xx support") removed support for MIPS VR41xx platform, so remove exclusive drivers for this platform, too. Signed-off-by: Thomas Bogendoerfer Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220716130802.11660-1-tsbogend@alpha.franken.de Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

remove the raw driver

2021-06-04T13:35:03+00:00

The raw driver used to provide direct unbuffered access to block devices before O_DIRECT was invented. It has been obsolete for more than a decade. Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/Pine.LNX.4.64.0703180754060.6605@CPE00045a9c397f-CM001225dbafb6/ Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210531072526.97052-1-hch@lst.de Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

char: xillybus: Fix condition for invoking the xillybus/ subdirectory

2021-06-03T12:10:03+00:00

As Xillybus' configuration symbol hierarchy has been reorganized recently, the correct condition for compiling the xillybus/ subdirectory is now CONFIG_XILLYBUS_CLASS, and not CONFIG_XILLYBUS. Reported-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman Signed-off-by: Eli Billauer Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210528092242.51104-1-eli.billauer@gmail.com Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

rtc/alpha: remove legacy rtc driver

2020-03-19T06:41:02+00:00

The old drivers/char/rtc.c driver was originally the implementation for x86 PCs but got subsequently replaced by the rtc class driver on all architectures except alpha. Move alpha over to the portable driver and remove the old one for good. The CONFIG_JS_RTC option was only ever used on SPARC32 but has not been available for many years, this was used to build the same rtc driver with a different module name. Cc: Richard Henderson Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky Cc: Matt Turner Cc: linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org Cc: Paul Gortmaker Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann Signed-off-by: Alexandre Belloni Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200226224322.187960-2-alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

rtc/ia64: remove legacy efirtc driver

2020-03-19T06:41:02+00:00

There are two EFI RTC drivers, the original drivers/char/efirtc.c driver and the more modern drivers/rtc/rtc-efi.c. Both implement the same interface, but the new one does so in a more portable way. Move everything over to that one and remove the old one. Cc: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org Cc: Fenghua Yu Cc: Tony Luck Cc: Stephane Eranian Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann Signed-off-by: Alexandre Belloni Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200226224322.187960-1-alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

char: remove the SGI tiocx/mbcs driver

2019-08-16T18:33:56+00:00

The SGI SN2 support is about to be removed. Remove this driver that depends on the SN2 support. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20190813072514.23299-3-hch@lst.de Signed-off-by: Tony Luck

char: remove the SGI snsc driver

2019-08-16T18:33:56+00:00

char/generic_nvram: Remove as unused

2019-01-22T09:21:45+00:00

Signed-off-by: Finn Thain Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman