I have trouble in running "make dep" when I try to compile linux kernel 2.4.18:
/bin/sh: scripts/mkdep: args list too long
make: *** [dep-files] error 126

I know this dued to long argument list "/home/gentlecm/downloads/XSBase255_Linux_CDROM/Kernel/2.4.18-rmk7-pxa1-XSBase/", which specifies a directory where kernel files reside.

I will have no problem if I put the kernel files to a directory of a short path, for instance, "/home/kernel/"
.

I better tell you my linux system is Ubuntu5.10, though I know the problem has nothing about what kind of linux my system is.

And, I have googled for this and get something like the kernel parameter "larg_ncargs_enabled", and linux command "xargs". But I don't know how to reset this kernel parameter and use this command for I could get little search results on them.

Any advice is appreciated.

"large_ncargs_enabled" is actually an HP-UX tunable, not a Linux one.

Trying to change this limit is anyway the wrong approach, if you reach the limit then there is something wrong in your script. Better to fix it with xargs, which is indeed the right answer.

Of course avoiding the limit by using shorter directories is an acceptable workaround.

You can have both the long and short names exist by using a symbolic link:
ln -s /home/gentlecm/downloads/XSBase255_Linux_CDROM/Kernel/2.4.18-rmk7-pxa1-XSBase /home/kernel

Thank you so much for your advice. But I yet don't know how to use "xargs" together with "make dep" to do my job correctly. I tried to type "xargs make dep", but it just didn't work, actually, it seemed to be suspended. Could you please offer me other advice on this?

What's wrong with my symlink advice ?