Linux 5.16's Staging Enjoys An Autumn Cleaning - 20k+ Lines Of Code Removed

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 6 November 2021 at 09:20 AM EDT. 1 Comment
LINUX KERNEL
There isn't any shiny new drivers part of the kernel's staging area for Linux 5.16 but exciting from a maintenance perspective is a rather healthy clean-up affecting multiple areas of this "proving grounds" area of the kernel.

While no big additions for staging in Linux 5.16, there are multiple clean-ups to different staging components that yielded a lot of code removed. In fact, over 20k lines of code were removed from the staging area for Linux 5.16.

The Realtek r8188eu has seen a lot of code removed and other code cleansed as well as seeing clean-ups to wlan-ng, fbtft, the MOST subsystem drivers, various rtl8* drivers, the rts5208 driver, vt6655, vc04_services, WFX, and mt7621 drivers.

The WFX code is cleaned up almost to the point that it will be promoted out of staging soon. The WFX code is for the Silicon Laboratories WiFi Linux driver. The WFX driver was introduced back in Linux 5.5 after being an out-of-tree kernel module.

The full list of changes (mostly cleaning up of existing code) for staging in Linux 5.16 can be found via this pull.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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