28f94a4429
Kbuild descends into a directory by either 'y' or 'm', but there is an important difference. Kbuild combines the built-in objects into built-in.a in each directory. The built-in.a in the directory visited by obj-y is merged into the built-in.a in the parent directory. This merge happens recursively when Kbuild is ascending back towards the top directory, then built-in objects are linked into vmlinux eventually. This works properly only when the Makefile specifying obj-y is reachable by the chain of obj-y. On the other hand, Kbuild does not take built-in.a from the directory visited by obj-m. This it, all the objects in that directory are supposed to be modular. If Kbuild descends into a directory by obj-m, but the Makefile in the sub-directory specifies obj-y, those objects are just left orphan. The current statement "Kbuild only uses this information to decide that it needs to visit the directory" is misleading. Clarify the difference. Reported-by: Johan Hovold <johan@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Johan Hovold <johan@kernel.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.