Linux 7.4 Could End Up Seeing Kernel Builds ~36% Faster, Incremental Builds ~70% Faster

Earlier this month I wrote about a patch series posted to the Linux kernel mailing list that addressed a lot of "hideous code" to make Linux kernel builds faster. A number of single-threaded bottlenecks were tracked down and fixed within the Linux kernel thanks to the assistance of AI. A second revision of those patches hit the mailing list this morning and there is hope they could be upstreamed for Linux 7.4.

These patches are very beneficial for accelerating Linux kernel builds times. A Linux kernel build with all modules included "allmodconfig" came in at 36% faster while incremental kernel builds came in at around 70% faster.

Lorenzo Stoakes of ARM spearheaded this work and today submitted the second version of the patches. Two of the original patches were already picked up and merged. The other patches have seen some fixes, rebasing against the latest upstream Linux Git code, making the Rust compiler parallel front-end op-tin, and other mostly small changes.

Stoakes commented that with the changes largely uncontroversial, he says things are hopefully looking good for getting these patches merged for the next kernel cycle, Linux 7.4. This is very exciting to see and quite a win with double digit percentage improvements to kernel build times.

The v2 patches for those interested in this work can be found via the kernel mailing list.