David S. Miller 8a7e8ff8ce isdn: deprecate non-mISDN drivers ... When isdn4linux came up in the context of another patch series, I remembered that we had discussed removing it a while ago. It turns out that the suggestion from Karsten Keil wa to remove I4L in 2018 after the last public ISDN networks are shut down. This has happened now (with a very small number of exceptions), so I guess it's time to try again. We currently have three ISDN stacks in the kernel: the original isdn4linux (with the hisax driver), the newer CAPI (with four drivers), and finally the mISDN stack (supporting roughly the same hardware as hisax). As far as I can tell, anyone using ISDN with mainline kernel drivers in the past few years uses mISDN, and this is typically used for voice-only PBX installations that don't require a public network. The older stacks support additional features for data networks, but those typically make no sense any more if there is no network to connect to. My proposal for this time is to kill off isdn4linux entirely, as it seems to have been unusable for quite a while. This code has been abandoned for many years and it does cause problems for treewide maintenance as it tends to do everything that we try to stop doing. Birger Harzenetter mentioned that is is still using i4l in order to make use of the 'divert' feature that is not part of mISDN, but has otherwise moved on to mISDN for normal operation, like apparently everyone else. CAPI in turn is not quite as obsolete, but two of the drivers (avm and hysdn) don't seem to be used at all, while another one (gigaset) will stop being maintained as Paul Bolle is no longer able to test it after the network gets shut down in September. All three are now moved into drivers/staging to let others speak up in case there are remaining users. This leaves Bluetooth CMTP as the only remaining user of CAPI, but Marcel Holtmann wishes to keep maintaining it. For the discussion on version 1, see [2] Unfortunately, Karsten Keil as the maintainer has not participated in the discussion. Arnd [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/8484861/#17900371 [2] https://listserv.isdn4linux.de/pipermail/isdn4linux/2019-April/thread.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQIcBAABCAAGBQJc8QxgAAoJEJpsee/mABjZriwQAKL4L62VUz9nbLdK1b0wHsT/ ttHYRZwyzTqzzfXEEyTVynHdwW0qjXxmjfOP7gl1ZY62KtuuBC0XlpQ4Ho05h/DZ zqWSS+BunIHShbS/9Cv+/d2biGVa9+XPgbV2XptPC0zm+VuucnKIssPbawD65rQU BtiNFGqGNo5Wkjn5kdkFIIOdL+eNlW/+l8iuewhJfAoFJYMuKHy6jWUfUqDD/9nv EyrNdWgbPZqwLVKYcqQWpJ0Fy8w1uDhbKbL7PdK/O7aHkNOPLBLY28AEVW0gZ7P1 WmlhChyk84Xp3/9A+aV2q/4rdtjJ1hkEGXyPTeR0TJ6OSKbs90xJA92sVnwBM3TH yaRiFDRFMbu39lxngYYKDcq3BCUUuSVZw9zvtIW+T38DeFT2DcNapDGSqpp3Fhbo QhU8iJK2TnUqbQSMCPuAa14bvowPvDIlmYBV/2aMiDEegjj2Zo1G/Y3oA2JuePwU FVhbYYQTBUF9Un/J5EyuejVBKv/N+8P17hzFADqnuMZ5HzfXtUz0Nv8WwLRsflYo 5ZjNkhEqvLuTVaXtwdWh8nEsXmb1dIpQs4Z9fP3GPirOg9aN1MVIZ38qc9wBmGlk 5V+Fk7kGqfvXMVeE91M4A+ojd06/fG7RGHW4FCmI+/jeYNt1ncPR0wEU5K5qKIC4 qMwln0DfduKFLEE2wcX8 =1ISP -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Merge tag 'isdn-removal' of https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/arnd/playground Arnd Bergmann says: ==================== isdn: deprecate non-mISDN drivers When isdn4linux came up in the context of another patch series, I remembered that we had discussed removing it a while ago. It turns out that the suggestion from Karsten Keil wa to remove I4L in 2018 after the last public ISDN networks are shut down. This has happened now (with a very small number of exceptions), so I guess it's time to try again. We currently have three ISDN stacks in the kernel: the original isdn4linux (with the hisax driver), the newer CAPI (with four drivers), and finally the mISDN stack (supporting roughly the same hardware as hisax). As far as I can tell, anyone using ISDN with mainline kernel drivers in the past few years uses mISDN, and this is typically used for voice-only PBX installations that don't require a public network. The older stacks support additional features for data networks, but those typically make no sense any more if there is no network to connect to. My proposal for this time is to kill off isdn4linux entirely, as it seems to have been unusable for quite a while. This code has been abandoned for many years and it does cause problems for treewide maintenance as it tends to do everything that we try to stop doing. Birger Harzenetter mentioned that is is still using i4l in order to make use of the 'divert' feature that is not part of mISDN, but has otherwise moved on to mISDN for normal operation, like apparently everyone else. CAPI in turn is not quite as obsolete, but two of the drivers (avm and hysdn) don't seem to be used at all, while another one (gigaset) will stop being maintained as Paul Bolle is no longer able to test it after the network gets shut down in September. All three are now moved into drivers/staging to let others speak up in case there are remaining users. This leaves Bluetooth CMTP as the only remaining user of CAPI, but Marcel Holtmann wishes to keep maintaining it. For the discussion on version 1, see [2] Unfortunately, Karsten Keil as the maintainer has not participated in the discussion. Arnd [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/8484861/#17900371 [2] https://listserv.isdn4linux.de/pipermail/isdn4linux/2019-April/thread.html ==================== Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>		2019-06-02 17:48:58 -07:00
..
mISDN	isdn: deprecate non-mISDN drivers	2019-06-02 17:48:58 -07:00
Makefile	isdn: move capi drivers to staging	2019-05-31 11:17:41 +02:00