I've been building a few kernels over the last few days, couldn't help it to notice that my .config appears to contain options that 1) I never found in the menuconfig/xconfig 2) never selected to be included

I have also noticed the file that is used for the configuration: /arch/x86/Kconfig which also appears to have some lines that look like "if embedded", I have yet to know what that represents or how to use or why it is for

purpose and reasons: I am building a system and I am starting with the kernel configuration file and want it to be complete for future reference of the various linux systems I will be building, I have to strip down every possible option from the kernel and to know what it is.

I have been trying to find documentation for the following non-existent options that appear in the .config file only:

CONFIG_GENERIC_TIME=y
CONFIG_GENERIC_CMOS_UPDATE=y
CONFIG_CLOCKSOURCE_WATCHDOG=y
CONFIG_GENERIC_CLOCKEVENTS=y
CONFIG_LOCKDEP_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_STACKTRACE_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_HAVE_LATENCYTOP_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_FAST_CMPXCHG_LOCAL=y

which as you can see are enabled by default.
I have tried to use "make allnoconfig" but that had no effect on those options.

I need help to find documentation of the non-existent kernel .config options

Google (and a lot of hard work) is your friend. I downloaded a number of kernels just now and rooted around for CONFIG_GENERIC_TIME. What I found was that somewhere back before 2.6.18.1 it came into existence. After that, more and more archs started checking it in their timekeeping code. From the S390 snippet below in a linux-kernel mailing list post, it looks like they had unique code throughout each of the architectures but used this to control the movement to some generic code. You'd have to look through each arch to see what it does.

From: http://lists.openwall.net/linux-kernel/2006/10/06/192

You will find these options in xconfig, if you go to "Option" at the top and select both "Show All Options" and "Show Debug Info"

thanks, it's good to see them, but it doesn't allow to unset them

does anyone know how i can use these items (options...) that are not normally visible? i'm asking this because my intel wireless 3945 drivers are there and i cannot access them.

edit: solved. turns out that with menuconfig i'm able to access them.