Step 4 – building the kernel image and modules

Performing the build from the end user point of view is actually quite simple. In its simplest form, just ensure you're in the root of the configured kernel source tree and type make. That's it – the kernel image and any kernel modules (and, on an embedded system, possibly a Device Tree Blob (DTB) binary) will get built. Grab a coffee! The first time around, it could take a while.

Of course, there are various Makefile targets we can pass to make. A quick make help command issued on the command line reveals quite a bit. Remember, we used this earlier, in fact, to see all possible configuration targets. Here, we use it to see what gets built by default with the all target:

$ cd ${LLKD_KSRC}     # the env var LLKD_KSRC holds the 'root' of our 
                      # 5.4 kernel source tree
$ make help
[...]
Other generic targets:
  all - Build all targets marked with [*]
* vmlinux - Build the bare kernel...