linux-kernel - Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Planning code obsolescence

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Date:   Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:47:04 -0700
From:   "josh@...htriplett.org" <josh@...htriplett.org>
To:     "Bird, Tim" <Tim.Bird@...y.com>
Cc:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        linux-arch <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        ksummit <ksummit-discuss@...ts.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Planning code obsolescence

On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 09:57:41PM +0000, Bird, Tim wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: josh@...htriplett.org
> > 
> > On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 05:00:12PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > The majority of the code in the kernel deals with hardware that was made
> > > a long time ago, and we are regularly discussing which of those bits are
> > > still needed. In some cases (e.g. 20+ year old RISC workstation support),
> > > there are hobbyists that take care of maintainership despite there being
> > > no commercial interest. In other cases (e.g. x.25 networking) it turned
> > > out that there are very long-lived products that are actively supported
> > > on new kernels.
> > >
> > > When I removed support for eight instruction set architectures in 2018,
> > > those were the ones that no longer had any users of mainline kernels,
> > > and removing them allowed later cleanup of cross-architecture code that
> > > would have been much harder before.
> > >
> > > I propose adding a Documentation file that keeps track of any notable
> > > kernel feature that could be classified as "obsolete", and listing
> > > e.g. following properties:
> > >
> > > * Kconfig symbol controlling the feature
> > >
> > > * How long we expect to keep it as a minimum
> > >
> > > * Known use cases, or other reasons this needs to stay
> > >
> > > * Latest kernel in which it was known to have worked
> > >
> > > * Contact information for known users (mailing list, personal email)
> > >
> > > * Other features that may depend on this
> > >
> > > * Possible benefits of eventually removing it
> > 
> > We had this once, in the form of feature-removal-schedule.txt. It was,
> > itself, removed in commit 9c0ece069b32e8e122aea71aa47181c10eb85ba7.
> > 
> > I *do* think there'd be value in having policies and processes for "how
> > do we carefully remove a driver/architecture/etc we think nobody cares
> > about". That's separate from having an actual in-kernel list of "things
> > we think we can remove".
> 
> I'm not sure the documents are the same.  I think what Arnd is proposing
> is more of a "why is this thing still here?" document.  When someone does
> research into who's still using a feature and why, that can be valuable information
> to share so that future maintenance or removal decisions can be better informed.
> 
> Maybe e-mails are sufficient for this, but they'd be harder to find than something in
> the kernel source. But that supposes that people would look at the file, which 
> appears didn't happen with feature-removal-schedule.txt.

Ah, I see. So this *isn't* about "features we want to remove", this is
"features people might think we should remove, but here's the
documentation for why we aren't"? More of an
obscure-but-still-wanted-features.txt?