Any faster way to compile the kernel?

[akywy]

Hi,

I am new to linux kernel and now doing some modifications to arch/i386/kernel/entry.S. The basic idea is to add some jump instructions which will jump to my trap functions defined in foo.c at the same directory.

I know the most straight forward way to compile the kernel is (I am using Fedora Core 3):
make mrproper
make menuconfig (or make oldconfig)
make
make install
make modules_install

Since my test machine is really slow (it's a PII 333 ), I really want to know if there is a faster way to compile the kernel? Because my modification each time is relatively small, such compilation really slows me down too much!!

Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot. Merry Christmas!

-Yi

[scientica]

you should try ccache - it'll speed re-compiles up a lot (well, for unmodified soure files), say you compile the kernel once (with ccache), then edit one file, then recompile it, this time only the modified file (and those depening on it's output) will be recompiled. If you made a mrpropper before the recompile it ccache will fetch the other files from it's cache, and in effect only the modified file (and those that depend on it) should be compiled while the others are simply copied from the cache.