Using menuconfig as an intro to ncurses

raypen · 07-22-2008, 12:11 PM

Since menuconfig is the ncurses based menu system for compiling
a kernel, I thought it might be a good place to start looking
at how ncurses programming functions.

Several menu configurations are available when compiling a kernel:

Code:

make config
make menuconfig
make xconfig
make gconfig

These all seem to be targets or option parameters for make. However,
there are no separate instruction files corresponding to these names
and having looked into make with a HEX editor, there seems to be no
reference to the options internally.

Not being a programmer, I am at somewhat of a loss. Can anyone
provide a concise explanation of the inner workings here?

jomen · 07-22-2008, 02:24 PM

If you start configuring a fresh kernel with any of those commands you will see a few lines of output in the terminal you run this from.
This points to the place where the scripts (rather the source for these) are located - on the last line is then the name of the script which is first built and then used:

Code:

make menuconfig
  HOSTCC  scripts/basic/fixdep
  HOSTCC  scripts/basic/docproc
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/conf.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/kxgettext.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/checklist.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/inputbox.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/menubox.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/textbox.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/util.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/lxdialog/yesno.o
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/mconf.o
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.c
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/lex.zconf.c
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.hash.c
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o
scripts/kconfig/lex.zconf.c:1628: Warnung: »input« definiert, aber nicht verwendet
  HOSTLD  scripts/kconfig/mconf
scripts/kconfig/mconf arch/x86/Kconfig

This seems rather complicated than a good starting point - but actually: I have no idea ... I'm fairly certain that this has nothing to do with "make" itself.