Re: [kbuild-devel] Re: Announce: Kernel Build for 2.5, Release 2.0 is available

[Brendan J Simon <brendan.simon@bigpond.com>]

Keith Owens wrote:

>It takes time to do all the analysis to work out what has changed and
>what has been affected.  You might know that you only changed one file
>but kernel build and make don't know that until they have checked
>everything.  Changing one file or specifying a command override might
>affect one file or it might affect the entire kernel.
>
>If you know that you have only changed one source file and you have not
>altered the Makefiles or the dependency chain in any way, then it
>_might_ be safe to just rebuild that one file, use NO_MAKEFILE_GEN=1.
>Otherwise let kbuild work out what has been affected.
>
Humans/Hackers are really really REALLY good at making assumptions and 
using assumptions that are outdated, thus leading to mistakes. 
 Some/many hackers like to live in there own little world and not worry 
about the effect they might have on other developers.  Using a 
dependency maintenance tool (such as Make, Cook, ...) to automate the 
build is the _ONLY_ safe way to be sure the build is correct.  This 
assumes that the build system itself is 100% correct :)

Regards,
Brendan Simon.