Date:   Wed, 1 Feb 2023 13:44:23 +0100
From:   Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To:     Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Cc:     Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
        Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
        Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com>,
        linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        regressions@lists.linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1] docs: describe how to quickly build Linux
Message-ID: <Y9pep+GBBaTiN/sN@kroah.com>
References: <fabdb45fa44db2531f0dbe5e88545c49dfb87040.1675252073.git.linux@leemhuis.info>
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On Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 01:42:29PM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 12:52:30PM +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > Add a text explaining how to quickly build a kernel, as that's something
> > users will often have to do when they want to report an issue or test
> > proposed fixes. This is a huge and frightening task for quite a few
> > users these days, as many rely on pre-compiled kernels and have never
> > built their own. They find help on quite a few websites explaining the
> > process in various ways, but those howtos often omit important details
> > or make things too hard for the 'quickly build just for testing' case
> > that 'localmodconfig' is really useful for. Hence give users something
> > at hand to guide them, as that makes it easier for them to help with
> > testing, debugging, and fixing the kernel.
> 
> First off, this is great, thanks for doing this.
> 
> One minor comment, to prevent people from "overloading" the
> git.kernel.org systems:
> 
> > +.. _sources_sbs:
> > +
> > + * Retrieve the sources of the Linux version you intend to build; then change
> > +   into the directory holding them, as all further commands in this guide are
> > +   meant to be executed from there.
> > +
> > +   If you plan to only build one particular kernel version, download its source
> > +   archive from https://kernel.org; afterwards extract its content to '~/linux/'
> > +   and change into the directory created during extraction.
> > +
> > +   In most other situations your best choice is to fetch the sources using git::
> > +
> > +          git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git \
> > +            ~/linux/sources
> > +          cd ~/linux/sources/
> 
> Ideally you should never do a "full clone from scratch" like this, as it
> takes up loads of server resources.  The "best" way to do this is to
> download the kernel git bundle, and then pull and resolve the remaining
> bits.  It's explained, with a script to do the work for you, here:
> 
> 	https://kernel.org/best-way-to-do-linux-clones-for-your-ci.html

Oops, here's the full steps involved:
	https://www.kernel.org/cloning-linux-from-a-bundle.html
the first link above has a script that does it all for you, but you
probably just want to copy the steps at this last link instead.

thanks,

greg k-h