kci_build.md

title	date	draft	description	weight
kci_build	2021-08-05	false	Command line tool to build the Linux kernel	3

The kci_build tool is used to run all the KernelCI steps related to building kernels with extras: getting the source, creating the config file, building the binaries, generating meta-data files and pushing the binaries to a storage server. The build-configs.yaml file contains the definitions of which kernel branches should be built and with which combinations of compilers, architectures, kernel configurations. See also the YAML configuration documentation for more details.

The kci_build command is self-contained and does not require to access any KernelCI services. If a kernelci-backend instance is available, build binaries can be sent to it to share them. This is however not strictly required to build kernels and run tests using binaries stored locally, such as in an individual developer environment.

Example: build linux-next

The example below shows how to build a kernel from linux-next which is the next build configuration in build-configs.yaml.

1. Local settings file

In order to simplify the command line syntax and avoid passing the same options many times, a local settings file can be used. Here's a sample one to use with this example:

[DEFAULT]
verbose: true

[kci_build]
kdir: linux
output: linux/build-x86
build_env: gcc-8
arch: x86_64
install: true

These settings can be stored in a kernelci.conf file in the current directory.

While it's technically possible to also define build_config: next in the settings file, it's clearer in this example to pass it on the command lines to show where it is required. For example, another branch could be built with the same settings file and a different --build-config value.

Likewise, mirror: linux-mirror.git could be defined in the settings file. In this example, the mirror is optional so it's left out. It may be more practical to define it in a settings file for a real use-case.

Generally speaking, it's up to the user to decide which values to define in the settings file. They will act as defaults for all their matching command line arguments. See the settings section for more details on how this works.

2. Optional: set up a local mirror

Setting up a Git mirror helps if you need to have multiple copies of the source code checked out in different places.

To create or update an existing mirror and fetch the git history for the next build configuration:

./kci_build update_mirror --build-config=next --mirror=linux-mirror.git

3. Create or update a local check-out

Before building a kernel, the source code needs to be available locally. This is typically done using Git but not exclusively, extracting a tarball archive will also work. To create or update an existing local Git repo, in this example with the --mirror optional argument:

./kci_build update_repo --build-config=next --mirror=linux-mirror.git

Optionally, to generate additional config fragments to then be able to build defconfig+kselftest or other KernelCI specific configurations:

./kci_build generate_fragments --build-config=next

4. Build the kernel

Once the source tree has been initialised, the kernel can be built with the various kci_build make_* commands to perform each separate build step. The main difference between doing this with kci_build and manually calling make, is that kci_build will also generate some meta-data that can be send to the backend API and used when generating tests. The example below uses the local settings file mentioned previously with the build configuration and defconfig passed as command line arguments.

First, init_bmeta will create the basic build meta-data with the CPU architecture, the compiler type, the build configuration and the kernel revision:

./kci_build init_bmeta --build-config=next

Now it's time to actually build the kernel. Any locally installed compiler can be used, and there are also Docker images provided by KernelCI. These are used with all the kernels on kernelci.org so they help with reproducing the same builds. To use Docker with this example, first run these commands:

$ docker run -it -v $PWD:/root/kernelci-core kernelci/build-gcc-8_x86 /bin/bash
# cd /root/kernelci-core

Then to generate the kernel configuration, build the main image and the modules:

./kci_build make_config --defconfig=defconfig
./kci_build make_kernel
./kci_build make_modules

All the build artifacts can be found in the specified output directory i.e. linux/build-x86. The install: true option means that all the files that are suitable to be pushed to a KernelCI storage server will be installed in the linux/build-x86/_install_ directory. When using kernel builds only locally without a KernelCI backend, the install option can be ignored.

Note: the build_env option is only used to know the name and short version of the compiler (e.g. gcc) and populate the meta-data for the KernelCI database. It is not downloading a build environment or any particular toolchain version. A future improvement would be to enable an automatic mapping between build environment names and Docker image names; this currently has to be manually kept in sync.

5. Optional: push and publish the kernel build

If you have a kernelci-backend instance running, you can send the kernel binaries and the meta-data to it. It may then be used to show results on a web frontend, send email reports or retrieved later.

The backend is a type of database, so the --db-config, --db-token and --api parameters are needed. Passing those on the command line is far from ideal, especially for a secret API token. So they can be added to the settings file as well:

[DEFAULT]
db_config: localhost

[db:localhost]
db_token: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
api: http://192.168.122.1:5001

With all those things defined in the settings file, pushing the kernel binaries can be done with the following command:

./kci_build push_kernel

Then sending the build meta-data to the database can be done in a similar way using kci_data:

./kci_data submit_build