What is the fastest way to build and boot a kernel

[Stephen Brennan]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 08:59:36AM -0700, Code Soldier1 wrote:
> Can someone suggest what is the fastest way to build a minimal kernel
> and boot. For example if I am working on TCP and would like to make a
> small change and reboot, what is the fastest way, I rather not build
> the whole kernel.

To add to the already great list of advice (some of which I could have used
earlier in my life), I have found that virtual machines can be very useful. In
particular, there are tools [1] that allow you to run a linux kernel within a
virtual machine that shares your filesystem. You can use a quite minimal kernel
configuration, and the resulting build times are around 5 seconds for
incremental builds, and booting your new kernel in a virtual machine happens in
mere seconds.

Stephen

[1]: https://github.com/g2p/vido