I just noticed this today. I'm not sure why everything recompiles. It
probably has to do with touching the config file(s). The object files
probably depend on it. I thing it's more complicated than you make it
sound though. Let's say you originally have the sound driver compiled
as a module and now you want to compile it directly into the
kernel. GNU make certainly can't tell whether the sound.o file is
compiled as a module or directly into the kernel, so the Kernel people
took the safe road and decided that if the config file changes,
everything has to be recompiled. That could certainly be made more
sophisticated but how often does the average user have to recompile a
kernel? I do it MAYBE twice when a new kernel comes out (I almost
always screw something up my first time through the configuration),
and that's probably a lot. I can envision a lot of people just using
the stock kernel and modules that comes with their distribution of
choice and never even attempting a compile on their own.
| Also, is there a list of where one can obtain the very latest
| compilers and libraries needed to compile the 2.1.x kernels?
| These will not compile at all with the tools released in
| popular distributions (Slackware, Redhat, Debian, etc.).
Hmm. Don't know about that. I was running 2.1.125 as my default kernel
for a few weeks or so (before I switched to 2.0.36 this morning) and
it compiled up just fine on my stock Debian 2.0 system. Ran without a
hitch. There were some boot time warnings, like setserial is
apparently obsolete with 2.1.1xx, but it ran like a champ. In addition
I compiled 2.1.128 this morning and it compiled right up. I haven't
tried running it yet, and may not get a chance to, but it compiled
fine. Why do you say the 2.1.1xx kernels won't compile? What errors
are you seeing? What distribution are you using?
Gary
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