Kernel Makefile

In this post, I sum up the main Makefile parameters and targets, right now it mainly corresponds to $make help but I might edit this entry to add useful information.

First of all use (if in the directory of the kernel sources)

$ make help

or if you are not in the directory of the kernel sources (then located in )

$ make -C help

This more or less gives the following information.

This outputs a list of possible target and supplementary information:

• a few variable can be set
  ARCH=um ... for the corresponding architecture V=1 > means verbose build V=2 > gives reason for rebuild of target O=dir > is the output directory of the build including .config file C=1 or C=2 > checking (resp force check) of c sources
• Documentation
  • make [htmldocs|mandocs|pdfdocs|psdocs|xmldocs] ->>> build the corresponding docs
• Packages
  • make rpm-pkg > allows to build src and binary rpm packages
  • make binrpm-pkg > allows to build binary rpm packages
  • make deb-pkg > allows to build deb packages
  • make tar-pkg > allows to build uncompressed tarball
  • make targz-pkg > allows to build gzipped compressed tarball
  • make tarbz2-pkg > allows to build bzip2 compressed tarball
• Cleaning targets:
  • clean - Remove most generated files but keep the config and enough build support to build external modules
  • mrproper - Remove all generated files + config + various backup files
  • distclean - mrproper + remove editor backup and patch files
  Note that it can be useful to use ARCH=... in the cleaning process
• Kernel Configuration targets:
  • config - Update current config utilising a line-oriented program
  • menuconfig - Update current config utilising a menu based program
  • xconfig - Update current config utilising a QT based front-end
  • gconfig - Update current config utilising a GTK based front-end
  • oldconfig - Update current config utilising a provided .config as base
  • silentoldconfig - Same as oldconfig, but quietly
  • randconfig - New config with random answer to all options
  • defconfig - New config with default answer to all options
  • allmodconfig - New config selecting modules when possible
  • allyesconfig - New config where all options are accepted with yes
  • allnoconfig - New config where all options are answered with no
• Other useful targets:
  • prepare - Set up for building external modules
  • all - Build all targets marked with [*]
    • * vmlinux - Build the bare kernel
    • * modules - Build all modules
    • modules_install - Install all modules to INSTALL_MOD_PATH (default: /)
  • dir/ - Build all files in dir and below
  • dir/file.[ois] - Build specified target only
  • dir/file.ko - Build module including final link

Note that there are also some little things about tags for editors, but I am not so sure what it really brings.