On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Graeme Russ [off-list ref] wrote:

Hi All,

Hopefully this will help demystify the build process

Notation:
<primary input file> (<file size in bytes>)
?|
?+ <additional input file>
?|
?* <command>
?|
?\-> <output file> (<file size in bytes>)

The file sizes are arbitrary and are based on the current configuration
options I have set for a small kernel. They are simply there to illustrate
the relative differences in file sizes.

Great! Thanks for sharing this.

Note that vmlinux.o is not used to generate bzImage but I've included it
for completeness

[...]

+ net/built-in.o
|
* ld -m elf_i386 -r -o vmlinux.o
|
\->vmlinux.o (2,889,050)

What is the purpose of vmlinux.o then?

thanks,
Daniel.