kbuild: improved modversioning support for external modules

[mirror_ubuntu-bionic-kernel.git] / Documentation / kbuild / modules.txt

In this document you will find information about:
- how to build external modules
- how to make your module use kbuild infrastructure
- how kbuild will install a kernel
- how to install modules in a non-standard location

=== Table of Contents

	=== 1 Introduction
	=== 2 How to build external modules
	   --- 2.1 Building external modules
	   --- 2.2 Available targets
	   --- 2.3 Available options
	   --- 2.4 Preparing the kernel tree for module build
	   --- 2.5 Building separate files for a module
	=== 3. Example commands
	=== 4. Creating a kbuild file for an external module
	=== 5. Include files
	   --- 5.1 How to include files from the kernel include dir
	   --- 5.2 External modules using an include/ dir
	   --- 5.3 External modules using several directories
	=== 6. Module installation
	   --- 6.1 INSTALL_MOD_PATH
	   --- 6.2 INSTALL_MOD_DIR
	=== 7. Module versioning & Module.symvers
	   --- 7.1 Symbols fron the kernel (vmlinux + modules)
	   --- 7.2 Symbols and external modules
	   --- 7.3 Symbols from another external module
	=== 8. Tips & Tricks
	   --- 8.1 Testing for CONFIG_FOO_BAR



=== 1. Introduction

kbuild includes functionality for building modules both
within the kernel source tree and outside the kernel source tree.
The latter is usually referred to as external modules and is used
both during development and for modules that are not planned to be
included in the kernel tree.

What is covered within this file is mainly information to authors
of modules. The author of an external modules should supply
a makefile that hides most of the complexity so one only has to type
'make' to build the module. A complete example will be present in