First of all many thanks for your help. And very useful information. >From: Kristof Provost >To: Max >Hi, >I've moved this discussion to kernel newbies as Robert suggested.
Many thanks Kristof. Now I know where to post my newbie questions ;-) Although linux-newbie traffic seems very low... >>On 2007-11-21 01:16:37 (-0800), Max <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Is it the same to comment out a variable in .config than assigning 'N' to it? >No and yes. >I guess that doesn't help, so I'll try the long answer: >The .config file is generated by kconfig and parsed by Make. That means >there's a difference between "CONFIG_TEST = N" and "#CONFIG_TEST is not >set". However, the CONFIG_ variables are usually used as >"obj-$(CONFIG_TEST)". The kernel makefiles don't add obj-n to the list >of files to build, so nothing is done for those variables. >> Or even more general: >> Could anybody please help me in understanding the main picture of how a .config variable gets #define'd or #undefine'd in the kernel >> header files? >That's actually done by kconfig. It generates the .config file (based on >user choices or defaults) but it also generates >include/linux/autoconf.h. That header file does "#define CONFIG_TEST". >It will also touch include/config/test so the build system can be clever >when rebuilding. It allows the system to avoid rebuilding everything >which includes autoconf.h when the configuration is updated. The system >will replace the dependency on autoconf.h with a dependency on >config/test. Kconfig will only touch (update) the config/test file if >the value of CONFIG_TEST changed. That way only files which actually use >CONFIG_TEST will be rebuilt. >Kristof Let me see if I understand the whole picture: When you do: $ make defconfig (for example) ... scripts/kconfig/conf -d arch/i386/Kconfig ... Runs and the .config gets created (in this case with defaults) Then when you do: $ make ... scripts/kconfig/conf -s arch/i386/Kconfig ... Runs and the following 3 files are generated just before the whole shebang starts: -include/config/auto.conf.cmd -include/linux/autoconf.h -include/config/auto.conf Well I did this simple exercise $ make defconfig vi .config and assign 'n' to CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMER (only for testing) Then run $ make oldconfig And that make oldconfig automatically commented out this line. Which may suggest that CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMER=n #CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMER Are treated in an equivalent way for the compilation building process.... I don't know if this holds true for all other CONFIG_ variables. But at least is a starting point. The clues could probably arise by reading and understanding scripts/kconfig/confdata.c Thanks again for your help, Max ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs