I found a bug in kselftest KBUILD_OUTPUT handling.

The following works: $ cd /home/tbird/work/linux $ export KBUILD_OUTPUT=/home/tbird/work/kbuild $ yes '' | make localmodconfig $ make TARGETS=size kselftest

But this doesn't work: $ cd /home/tbird/work/linux $ export KBUILD_OUTPUT=../kbuild $ yes '' | make localmodconfig $ make TARGETS=size kselftest

I see the following: make[1]: Entering directory '/home/tbird/work/kbuild' make --no-builtin-rules INSTALL_HDR_PATH=$BUILD/usr \ ARCH=x86 -C ../../.. headers_install INSTALL ../kbuild/kselftest/usr/include gcc -static -ffreestanding -nostartfiles -s get_size.c -o ../kbuild/kselftest/size/get_size /usr/bin/ld: cannot open output file ../kbuild/kselftest/size/get_size: No such file or directory collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status ../lib.mk:138: recipe for target '../kbuild/kselftest/size/get_size' failed make[3]: *** [../kbuild/kselftest/size/get_size] Error 1 Makefile:136: recipe for target 'all' failed make[2]: *** [all] Error 2 /home/tbird/work/linux/Makefile:1240: recipe for target 'kselftest' failed make[1]: *** [kselftest] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/tbird/work/kbuild' Makefile:179: recipe for target 'sub-make' failed make: *** [sub-make] Error 2

This is due to the relative path for KBUILD_OUTPUT being handled incorrectly (I believe) in tools/testing/selftests/Makefile.

There are these lines in the Makefile, which are responsible for creating the output directory: BUILD_TARGET=$$BUILD/$$TARGET mkdir $$BUILD_TARGET -p

But these are executed from working directory tools/testing/selftests, so the 'size' directory gets created at tools/testing/kbuild/kselftest/size, instead of /home/tbird/work/kbuild/kselftest/size.

I can add some code to the Makefile to change the assignment of the variable BUILD, so that if it is a relative path it is relative to $(top_srcdir) instead of the current directory. But I wanted to check and make sure that I'm not breaking anyone else's workflow.

I'm not sure what the expectation would be for someone who did this: $ export KBUILD_OUTPUT=../kbuild ; make -C tools/testing/selftests run_tests

But I assume if someone is running the kernel's 'make' from the top-level kernel source directory, and they have a relative KBUILD_OUTPUT directory, then they want that output directory to be relative to the top-level directory and not somewhere else.

Should I just code up something for review?

I use relative KBUILD_OUTPUT paths for a number of my kernel build scripts, and right now these are incompatible with kselftests.

Thanks, -- Tim