Embedded Linux for Developers

Building the kernel

Having decided which kernel to base your build on, the next step is to build it.

Getting the source

Let's assume that you have a board that is supported in mainline. You can get the source code through git or by downloading a tarball. Using git is better because you can see the commit history, you can easily see any changes you may make and you can switch between branches and versions. In this example, we are cloning the stable tree and checking out the version tag 4.1.10:

$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux
$ cd linux
$ git checkout v4.1.10

Alternatively, you could download the tarball from https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.1.10.tar.xz.

There is a lot of code ...