Understand what is KBuild

Question

I'm a newbie to Linux kernel.

I'm trying to understand the idea, high level what is kbuild.

When I compile kernel I call make, which is on Linux machine will GNU make.

So what is KBuild? Is it a set of makefiles which are used by including in kernel makefiles? Where kmk is used?

Reference will be helpful.

Thanks

Answer 1

The links you have mentioned have nothing to do with the Linux kernel. kbuild is an assortment of scripts that are built-in inside the kernel's sources, and the kernel build process does not depend on anything named kmk. The kernel build system depends only on the standard GNU make, and it takes care of compiling its own helper programs, most of which are located under scripts/ directory.

Under the source tree, there is a directory Documentation/kbuild – it contains some documentation on using the kernel's build system.