David S. Miller complains that CONFIG_MODULE_SIG slows down builds, and he does hundreds of allmodconfig builds every day.

This complaint falls apart fairly quickly in the comments; he knows he can simply turn it off, but what about others who he simply tells to test with allmodconfig?  One presumes they are not doing hundreds of kernel builds a day.

linux-next had the same issue, and a similar complaint; I had less sympathy when I suggested they might want to also turn off CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO if they were worried about compile speed, and indeed, found out Stephen already did.  Now they turn off CONFIG_MODULE_SIG, too.

Here are some compile times on my i386 laptop, using v3.7-rc1-1-g854e98a as I turn options off:

  • allmodconfig: 52 minutes
  • ... without CONFIG_MODULE_SIG: 45 minutes
  • ... without CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO: 40 minutes
  • ... without CONFIG_MODVERSIONS and CONFIG_MODULE_SRCVERSION_ALL: 38 minutes
  • ... without CONFIG_KALLSYMS: 37 minutes
  • ... using -O1 instead of -Os: 24 minutes (not a good idea, since we lose CONFIG_DEBUG_STRICT_USER_COPY_CHECKS).

In summary, the real problem is that people don't really want 'allmodconfig'.  They want something which would compile a kernel with as much coverage as possible with no intention of actually booting it; say 'allfastconfig'?