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Thomas Petazzoni f507921d39 linux: add support for initramfs
In Buildroot, the kernel is built and installed *before* the root
filesystems are built. This allows the root filesystem to correctly
contain the kernel modules that have been installed.

However, in the initramfs case, the root filesystem is part of the
kernel. Therefore, the kernel should be built *after* the root
filesystem (which, in the initramfs case simply builds a text file
listing all files/directories/devices/symlinks that should be part of
the initramfs). However, this isn't possible as the initramfs text
file would lack all kernel modules.

So, the solution choosen here is to keep the normal order: kernel is
built before the root filesystem is generated, and to add a little
quirk to retrigger a kernel compilation after the root filesystem
generation.

To do so, we add a ROOTFS_$(FSTYPE)_POST_TARGETS variable to the
fs/common.mk infrastructure. This allows individual filesystems to set
a target name that we should depend on *after* generating the root
filesystem itself (contrary to normal ROOTFS_$(FSTYPE)_DEPENDENCIES,
on which we depend *before* generating the root filesystem).

The initramfs code in fs/initramfs/initramfs.mk uses this to add a
dependency on 'linux26-rebuild-with-initramfs'.

In linux/linux.mk, we do various things :

 * If BR2_TARGET_ROOTFS_INITRAMFS is enabled (i.e if initramfs is
   enabled as a root filesystem type), then we create an empty
   rootfs.initramfs file (remember that at this point, the root
   filesystem hasn't been generated) and we adjust the kernel
   configuration to include an initramfs. Of course, in the initial
   kernel build, this initramfs will be empty.

 * In the linux26-rebuild-with-initramfs target, we retrigger a
   compilation of the kernel image, after removing the initramfs in
   the kernel sources to make sure it gets properly rebuilt (we've
   experienced cases were modifying the rootfs.initramfs file wouldn't
   retrigger the generation of the initramfs at the kernel level).

This is fairly quirky, but initramfs really is a special case, so in
one way or another, we need a little quirk to solve its specialness.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>
2010-06-22 21:20:28 +02:00
boot
configs
docs
fs linux: add support for initramfs 2010-06-22 21:20:28 +02:00
linux linux: add support for initramfs 2010-06-22 21:20:28 +02:00
package Add generic functions to enable/set/disable options in kconfig files 2010-06-22 21:20:27 +02:00
scripts
target Remove old Linux infrastructure 2010-06-22 21:20:26 +02:00
toolchain
.defconfig
.gitignore
CHANGES
Config.in New, simpler, infrastructure for building the Linux kernel 2010-06-22 21:20:25 +02:00
COPYING
Makefile Remove old Linux infrastructure 2010-06-22 21:20:26 +02:00
TODO

To build and use the buildroot stuff, do the following:

1) run 'make menuconfig'
2) select the packages you wish to compile
3) run 'make'
4) wait while it compiles
5) Use your shiny new root filesystem.  Depending on which sortof
    root filesystem you selected, you may want to loop mount it,
    chroot into it, nfs mount it on your target device, burn it
    to flash, or whatever is appropriate for your target system.

You do not need to be root to build or run buildroot.  Have fun!

 -Erik

Offline build:
==============

In order to do an offline-build (not connected to the net), fetch all
selected source by issuing a
$ make source

before you disconnect.
If your build-host is never connected, then you have to copy buildroot
and your toplevel .config to a machine that has an internet-connection
and issue "make source" there, then copy the content of your dl/ dir to
the build-host.

Building out-of-tree:
=====================

Buildroot supports building out of tree with a syntax similar
to the Linux kernel. To use it, add O=<directory> to the
make command line, E.G.:

$ make O=/tmp/build

And all the output files (including .config) will be located under /tmp/build.

More finegrained configuration:
===============================

You can specify a config-file for uClibc:
$ make UCLIBC_CONFIG_FILE=/my/uClibc.config

And you can specify a config-file for busybox:
$ make BUSYBOX_CONFIG_FILE=/my/busybox.config

To use a non-standard host-compiler (if you do not have 'gcc'),
make sure that the compiler is in your PATH and that the library paths are
setup properly, if your compiler is built dynamically:
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3.orig HOSTCXX=gcc-4.3-mine

Depending on your configuration, there are some targets you can use to
use menuconfig of certain packages. This includes:
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 linux26-menuconfig
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 uclibc-menuconfig
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 busybox-menuconfig

Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the
buildroot mailing list: buildroot@uclibc.org