kbuild: handle module compression while running 'make modules_install'.
Since module-init-tools (gzip) and kmod (gzip and xz) support compressed
modules, it could be useful to include a support for compressing modules
right after having them installed. Doing this in kbuild instead of per
distro can permit to make this kind of usage more generic.
This patch add a Kconfig entry to "Enable loadable module support" menu
and let you choose to compress using gzip (default) or xz.
Both gzip and xz does not used any extra -[1-9] option since Andi Kleen
and Rusty Russell prove no gain is made using them. gzip is called with -n
argument to avoid storing original filename inside compressed file, that
way we can save some more bytes.
On a v3.16 kernel, 'make allmodconfig' generated 4680 modules for a
total of 378MB (no strip, no sign, no compress), the following table
shows observed disk space gain based on the allmodconfig .config :
The gain for restricted environnement seems to be interesting while
uncompress can be time consuming but happens only while loading a module,
that is generally done only once.
This is fully compatible with signed modules while the signed module is
compressed. module-init-tools or kmod handles decompression
and provide to other layer the uncompressed but signed payload.