How to customize configuration when building from source?

[buddyp]

I followed the directions from https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Compile-Firmware-from-source-using-Ubuntu and built a working trx for my RT-AC66U.

Now that I've done that I'd like to build a customized system without a lot of the default stuff that is in asuswrt.

I noticed that you can do 'make menuconfig' in the router directory, as well as the kernel and busybox directories (as you would expect). However, after a few minutes of looking at the top level (~/asuswrt-merlin/release/src-rt-6.x) Makefile it looks those lower level .config files are generated by the top level Makefile. Its been a decade since I looked at a Makefile that complicated and I'm not really fully groking it.

So I edited the .config at the top level and I did a 'make' with no target and I got a trx without the stuff I didn't want. Is this the right way to do it? Can I use the various 'make menuconfig' commands to tailor my trx further?

TIA!

 

[RMerlin]

Don't play with these config files, they are dynamically generated at build time.

Basic customizations must be done to the target.mak file. Some additional customizations can be made to config_base (router/) and config_base.6a (linux/linux-2.6.36/), but some of these might get overruled by the root level Makefile, which does additional changes based to the other config settings. Also note that kernel changes are always highly likely to break the firmware, as there are closed source modules which rely on a specific kernel configuration.

You should always do a "make clean" after making any changes to target.mak or the config_base files.

 

[buddyp]

Thanks!

I'm not sure how I missed target.mak when I was looking at the top-level makefiles but I did. I made my changes there and what got built looks like what I wanted. I'm going to give it a try when I get home tonight.