[H-GEN] Rebuilding kernel modules

[Steven McIntyre]

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  For some reason I had difficulty reading this message directly from
fox.uq.net.au; the entire email appears on one line.  No such problems
on the Debian system at home though...

> I needed to build a new kernel, so I followed the instructions in my Red Hat 7.3 customisation guide (very similar to those in the kernel HOWTO). Everything worked fine but it took four hours on the 200 MHz pentium I was using. Then I discovered I needed to change the kernel slightly (compile RTC as a module). Because of the recommendation to "make clean", the build took just as long as the first time. As so little has changed, is it really necessary to "make clean"? I would appreciate a reference to documentation on how to reduce the build time for a new kernel when (1) starting from a known compiled kernel and (2) only small changes in the .config file have been made.

  When making minor changes, skip the "make dep; make clean" steps.
  I rebuild the kernel from scratch only if I make major changes, which
saves a substantial amount of time (even on an XP 1600+ machine).

  If you are only changing modules, they can be recompiled with
  
  make modules; make modules_install

  As a sidenote, I'm sure a few have told me stories about kernel compiles
on their old 386/486 systems with 4mb of RAM that compiled for more than 
2 days...

-- 

Steven McIntyre
stev at uq.net.au


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