using kernel built outside source

[braver]

I like my kernels build outside source, for which 2.6 series has full support. In the source directory, you say

make O=/build/dir xconfig

-- and then do build there.

Yet Gentoo has problems with it. E.g.,

emerge lm_sensors

-- expects to find .config, so I thought of pointing /usr/src/linux to the /build/dir. Yet then it can't find some sources, so I had to repoint ot at /src/dir and copy .config there. Then it can't find autogenerated headers... Where do we point?

Cheers,
Alexy

[tobr]

My guess is that some programs (kernel modules, for example) need the kernel sources, the .config and the binaries. So IMHO you can't do this without symlinking everything that misses from /usr/src/linux.

[braver]

Kernel modules for 2.6, in fact, conform to the kbuild system and know how to find source directory from the build directory, when they are different. The build directory links back to the source one. For generality, they all support make variables, make C=/src/dir O=/build/dir.

Apparently, gentoo just doesn't know about a separate build directory. That's another reason I build my kernel manually, as I prefer to patch/unpatch a single clean source tree and have several different build directories, which I could quickly activate if need arose.