Kernel build performance [LWN.net]

Kernel build performance

Posted Nov 25, 2009 14:13 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Kernel build performance by mingo
Parent article: The 2009 Linux and free software timeline - Q1

people wouldnt accept 30+ minutes kernel build times

Your enormous hardware budget is showing :) until I upgraded this year I had never owned a machine nor even seen a machine which could build a kernel in less time than that. Multi-hour-long build times are not unknown, though admittedly you need to use 1999-vintage hardware for that, which is pushing obsoleteness even among those of us with near-nil hardware budgets.

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Kernel build performance

Posted Nov 25, 2009 15:41 UTC (Wed) by mingo (subscriber, #31122) [Link]

Your enormous hardware budget is showing :)

You are making assumptions :-)

I regularly build the kernel on stock laptops and desktops (which are typically 1-2-3 generations older than state-of-the-art) and the build times are well below 30 minutes. (usually within 10 minutes.)

The oldest system on which i still build the kernel is a 833 MHz P3 laptop with 512 MB of RAM, there a typical kernel takes 45 minutes to build. (But that's ~5 generations old and kernel developers/testers rarely use such old systems.)

I never build distro kernels though - i always use (and used) .config's tailored to the specific hardware. You can certainly waste a lot of time by building generic kernels.