GitLab

Kbuild builds init/built-in.a twice; first during the ordinary
directory descending, second from scripts/link-vmlinux.sh.

We do this because UTS_VERSION contains the build version and the
timestamp. We cannot update it during the normal directory traversal
since we do not yet know if we need to update vmlinux. UTS_VERSION is
temporarily calculated, but omitted from the update check. Otherwise,
vmlinux would be rebuilt every time.

When Kbuild results in running link-vmlinux.sh, it increments the
version number in the .version file and takes the timestamp at that
time to really fix UTS_VERSION.

However, updating the same file twice is a footgun. To avoid nasty
timestamp issues, all build artifacts that depend on init/built-in.a
are atomically generated in link-vmlinux.sh, where some of them do not
need rebuilding.

To fix this issue, this commit changes as follows:

[1] Split UTS_VERSION out to include/generated/utsversion.h from
    include/generated/compile.h

  ...