Tools for LinuxKernel development

• Ostra
• Sparse
• Git; see See KernelDevelopmentWithGit
• OProfile

Resources

• KernelDevelopmentDebugging
• Linux kernel source cross reference
• Hacking the Linux 2.6 kernel, Part 1: Getting ready
• Hacking the Linux 2.6 kernel, Part 2: Making your first hack

Some notes

In theory you can use DistCC or ccache to speed up compilation but IanMcDonald hasn't been able to get them to work with the kernel (he would love to be told how to though). The problem seems to be not so much with those products but the fact that when you do a make with a -j option it gets screwed up (-j does parallelisation).

A script to copy a new LinuxKernel to remote machines:

#! /bin/bash
# syntax m machine_num directory version
H=/home/ian
SRC=$H/linuxsrc/$2
VER=$3
rm $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER/build
rm $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER/source
rsync $SRC/System.map root@jandi$1:/boot/System.map-$VER
rsync $SRC/arch/i386/boot/bzImage root@jandi$1:/boot/vmlinuz-$VER
rsync $SRC/vmlinux root@jandi$1:/boot/vmlinux-$VER
rsync -av $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER root@jandi$1:/lib/modules

It has also been suggested to me to use kgdb with qemu and/or kgdboe to help with debugging.

CategoryKernel