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Remove pccard(4) and related pages
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Authored by bofh on Oct 29 2025, 1:00 PM.

Details

Reviewers

emaste
imp
jhb
lwhsu
ziaee

Summary

pccard has been declared obsolete for a long time and also the
support has been removed but the man page still exists. It mentions
being scheduled to be removed before 13.0 but it still exists in the
tree.

In addition there are also some more pages which are no longer required
as the relavent driver support has been removed.

Fixes: 31b35400c pccard: Remove more of the PC Card infrastructure

Diff Detail

Repository

rG FreeBSD src repository

Lint

Lint Skipped

Unit

Tests Skipped

Build Status

Buildable 68218
Build 65101: arc lint + arc unit

Event Timeline

bofh created this revision.Oct 29 2025, 1:00 PM

Herald added subscribers: ziaee, imp. · View Herald TranscriptOct 29 2025, 1:00 PM

bofh requested review of this revision.Oct 29 2025, 1:00 PM

Harbormaster completed remote builds in B68218: Diff 165309.Oct 29 2025, 1:00 PM

bofh added reviewers: emaste, imp, jhb, lwhsu.Oct 29 2025, 1:01 PM

emaste added inline comments.Oct 29 2025, 1:10 PM

share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	Maybe PCIe hot plug as a contemporary example but I'll leave it to @imp to comment on what makes sense.
share/man/man9/bus_alloc_resource.9
164

So, we did already zap pccard, but for now we're keeping cardbus?

share/man/man4/pcic.4
35	Hmm?
share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	Should we just change this to cardbus?
share/man/man9/bus_alloc_resource.9
164

emaste added inline comments.Oct 29 2025, 1:19 PM

share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	Cardbus is also obsolete

jhb accepted this revision.Oct 29 2025, 2:09 PM

jhb added inline comments.

share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	I don't think we need an example here.
share/man/man9/bus_alloc_resource.9
162	I would drop this entire sentence rather than just removing the reference to pccard(4).

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Oct 29 2025, 2:09 PM

imp added inline comments.Oct 29 2025, 3:20 PM

share/man/man4/pccbb.4
34	this should also be removed.
178	ditto
share/man/man4/pcic.4
35	This entire man page should be removed.
share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	Yea, I'd use usb as the example, but I'm kinda with John: we don't need an example. A cardbus would have to be changed fairly soon. USB would last forever. But we live in an age where everybody knows what a removable device is.
share/man/man9/bus_alloc_resource.9
162	Agreed.

emaste added inline comments.Oct 29 2025, 3:26 PM

share/man/man4/pccbb.4
34	exca(4) still exists though, we can extend this review to remove it as well and make it `Remove pccard(4) and related pages`
share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	But there isn't anything that would case `DEVICE_DETACH()` to be invoked before physically removing a device. In which cases will it be called before the device is going to be removed?

Obviously cardbus is obsolete, but do we still have drivers for it? I need this to be clear for the doc.

In the 15.0 we're about to release, 1. Does it have pccard drivers? 2. Does it have cardbus drivers?

This is what I do so that other people can do their jobs:

HW Relnotes Template: Remove drivers out since 14
The amr, esp, iir, mly, and twa drivers were removed in FreeBSD 14.0.

Ref:	src: 60de2867c9fccac5ee (amr: remove)
Ref:	src: 085935af8f2ea76757 (esp: remove)
Ref:	src: 339188a2c60caffe49 (iir: remove)
Ref:	src: a9620045a5b91f2b86 (mly: remove)
Ref:	src: 8722e05ae149696811 (twa: remove)

I need this to have a Fixes: tag for the commits that remove the underlying drivers.

This revision now requires changes to proceed.Oct 29 2025, 4:09 PM

Does it have pccard drivers? 2. Does it have cardbus drivers?

No, but some headers still exist under sys/dev/pccard. The main part of the removal was 31b35400cf77e788fec3d1c9fe590cdbb3544fd4 AFAICT.
Yes, src still exists under sys/dev/cardbus and sys/modules/Makefile still includes cardbus.

In D53434#1220236, @emaste wrote:

Does it have pccard drivers? 2. Does it have cardbus drivers?

No, but some headers still exist under sys/dev/pccard. The main part of the removal was 31b35400cf77e788fec3d1c9fe590cdbb3544fd4 AFAICT.

Yes, src still exists under sys/dev/cardbus and sys/modules/Makefile still includes cardbus.

Thank you so much. I will make sure the hardware release not reflects this accordingly.

bofh added inline comments.Nov 1 2025, 9:24 AM

share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	@emaste Does this mean that the entire list of Cardbus adapters we have in different man pages (`grep -Ri cardbus share/man`) is also unsupported? Should I also remove them as wel along with `cardbus(4)`?

imp added inline comments.Nov 1 2025, 9:32 AM

share/man/man9/DEVICE_DETACH.9
44	No. That's wrong. We still support them and they work given reports I get. It's a bad example is what ed means.
44	Yea. Cardbus never gave early warning. Hot plug pci or pcie are the only ones that can.

Remove additional pages which are no longer needed.

Harbormaster completed remote builds in B68325: Diff 165628.Nov 1 2025, 9:51 AM

bofh marked 2 inline comments as done and an inline comment as not done.Nov 1 2025, 9:54 AM

bofh retitled this revision from Remove pccard(4) to Remove pccard(4) and related pages.

bofh edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)

We're currently still building and installing the cbb and exca modules so should not remove the man pages for those yet.
exca – helper module for PC Card and CardBus systems
@imp should this be kept?

OK. Don't delete cbb/pccbb or references to it. It's the cardbus bridge.
Don't delete exca. Cardbus still uses it. I thought I'd eliminated it, but I just checked and it's still there. It's used to turn off PC Cards that happen to get inserted into cardbus slots and little else.

So pcic is gone. pccard is gone. But exca remains, pccbb (aka cbb) remains.