Menuconfig
Tool for compiling Linux source code
make menuconfig is one of five similar tools that can assist a user in configuring the Linux kernel before building, a necessary step needed to compile the source code. make menuconfig, with a menu-driven user interface, allows the user to choose which features and modules to compile. It is normally invoked using the command make menuconfig; menuconfig is a target in the Linux Makefile.
01Overview
make menuconfig was not in the first version of Linux. Prior to 2.5.45, the predecessor tool used Configuration Menu Language (CML) and was a question-and-answer-based utility (make config, make oldconfig).
Variations of the tool for Linux configuration include:
- make xconfig, which requires Qt
- make gconfig, which uses GTK+
- make nconfig, which is similar to make menuconfig.
All these tools use the Kconfig language internally. Kconfig is also used in other projects, such as Das U-Boot, a bootloader for embedded devices, Buildroot, a tool for generating embedded Linux systems, and BusyBox, a single-executable shell utility toolbox for embedded systems.
make menuconfig is generally more user-friendly compared to the question-and-answer-based configuration tool make config, and has a basic search system.
If the user is satisfied with a previous .config file, using make oldconfig uses this previous file to answer all questions that it can, only interactively presenting the new features.
02Dependencies
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Menuconfig”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Linux 4.4.2 ncurses configuration.png by Davod, GPL
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