1 Overview of Kbuild Commands
3 Michael Elizabeth Chastain, <mailto:mec@shout.net>
9 Someday we'll get our arms around all this stuff and clean it up
10 a little! Meanwhile, this file describes the system as it is today.
16 If you are building a kernel for the first time, here are the commands
23 Instead of 'make config', you can run 'make menuconfig' for a full-screen
24 text interface, or 'make xconfig' for an X interface using TCL/TK.
26 'make bzImage' will leave your new kernel image in arch/i386/boot/bzImage.
27 You can also use 'make bzdisk' or 'make bzlilo'.
29 See the lilo documentation for more information on how to use lilo.
30 You can also use the 'loadlin' program to boot Linux from MS-DOS.
32 Some computers won't work with 'make bzImage', either due to hardware
33 problems or very old versions of lilo or loadlin. If your kernel image
34 is small, you may use 'make zImage', 'make zdisk', or 'make zlilo'
37 If you find a file name 'vmlinux' in the top directory of the source tree,
38 just ignore it. This is an intermediate file and you can't boot from it.
40 Other architectures: the information above is oriented towards the
41 i386. On other architectures, there are no 'bzImage' files; simply
42 use 'zImage' or 'vmlinux' as appropriate for your architecture.
44 Note: the difference between 'zImage' files and 'bzImage' files is that
45 'bzImage' uses a different layout and a different loading algorithm,
46 and thus has a larger capacity. Both files use gzip compression.
47 The 'bz' in 'bzImage' stands for 'big zImage', not for 'bzip'!
51 === Top Level Makefile targets
53 Here are the targets available at the top level:
55 make config, make oldconfig, make menuconfig, make xconfig
57 Configure the Linux kernel. You must do this before almost
60 config line-oriented interface
61 oldconfig line-oriented interface, re-uses old values
62 menuconfig curses-based full-screen interface
63 xconfig X window system interface
67 This runs a little perl script that checks the source tree for
68 missing instances of #include <linux/config.h>. Someone needs to
69 do this occasionally, because the C preprocessor will silently give
70 bad results if these symbols haven't been included (it treats
71 undefined symbols in preprocessor directives as defined to 0).
72 Superfluous uses of #include <linux/config.h> are also reported,
73 but you can ignore these, because smart CONFIG_* dependencies
76 You can run 'make checkconfig' without configuring the kernel.
77 Also, 'make checkconfig' does not modify any files.
81 This runs another little perl script that checks the source tree
82 for options that are in Config.in files but are not documented
83 in scripts/Configure.help. Again, someone needs to do this
84 occasionally. If you are adding configuration options, it's
85 nice if you do it before you publish your patch!
87 You can run 'make checkhelp' without configuring the kernel.
88 Also, 'make checkhelp' does not modify any files.
92 'make dep' is a synonym for the long form, 'make depend'.
94 This command does two things. First, it computes dependency
95 information about which .o files depend on which .h files.
96 It records this information in a top-level file named .hdepend
97 and in one file per source directory named .depend.
99 Second, if you have CONFIG_MODVERSIONS enabled, 'make dep'
100 computes symbol version information for all of the files that
101 export symbols (note that both resident and modular files may
104 If you do not enable CONFIG_MODVERSIONS, you only have to run
105 'make dep' once, right after the first time you configure
106 the kernel. The .hdepend files and the .depend file are
107 independent of your configuration.
109 If you do enable CONFIG_MODVERSIONS, you must run 'make dep'
110 every time you change your configuration, because the module
111 symbol version information depends on the configuration.
113 [to be continued ...]