Looking to dissect kbuild

I have been building bespoke ucLinux kernels by way of 'make menuconfig' and running into various problems. I know I need to edit my dot-config file to set build flags but I am having to do too much tweak-and-try. I want to know more about how that file interacts with the build system. In particular, in situations like a build seeing a syntax error in foo.c, I want to trace from foo.c all the way up to every entry in dot-config that imports or depends on foo.c. Basically I am looking for high level architectural help / debug guide on kbuild. Where would I find such a resource? My google searches have not turned up much. -- cc:NSA