menuconfig

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 has an updated TUI, compared 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.

To use make menuconfig, Linux source is a requirement, a make tool, a C compiler, and the ncurses library.

• GNU Compiler Collection
• TUI

• The make menuconfig tool itself.
• Linux From Scratch
• How to Build a Minimal Linux System Archived 2009-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
• Creating custom kernels with Debian's kernel-package system
• Cross compiling Linux on IBM System z
• How to roll your own Linux
• Building A Kernel The Traditional Way
• The Linux Kernel HOWTO
• Kconfig language

• The Linux Kernel Archives