[PATCH] Documentation/kbuild: Document gendwarfksyms build dependencies

From: Jihan LIN via B4 Relay
Date: Thu Jan 08 2026 - 06:44:52 EST


From: Jihan LIN <linjh22s@xxxxxxxxx>

Although dependencies for gendwarfksyms were recently added to the
packaging rules [1-2], the corresponding documentation was missing.

Document the required build dependencies for gendwarfksyms, and
include a few examples for installing these dependencies on some
distributions.

[1] commit 657f96cb7c06 ("kbuild: deb-pkg: Add libdw-dev:native to
Build-Depends-Arch")
[2] commit 5bd6bdd0f76e ("kbuild: rpm-pkg: Add (elfutils-devel or
libdw-devel) to BuildRequires")

Fixes: f28568841ae0 ("tools: Add gendwarfksyms")
Signed-off-by: Jihan LIN <linjh22s@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Hi,

I found there is no documentation for build dependencies in gendwarfksyms
while digging into Rust drivers. Though Yuli added libdw-dev to the build
dependencies for packaging [1], it seems that there is no documentation
about it.

This patch documents the build dependencies of gendwarfksyms and adds a few
examples for installing these dependencies on some distributions.

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/79C925DCE2E963FF+20250422104927.144252-1-wangyuli@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/
---
Documentation/kbuild/gendwarfksyms.rst | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 23 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/kbuild/gendwarfksyms.rst b/Documentation/kbuild/gendwarfksyms.rst
index ed366250a54eac3a72c2f529da94a9e803704ae4..85fe9086beb760500250e7539058dce515681378 100644
--- a/Documentation/kbuild/gendwarfksyms.rst
+++ b/Documentation/kbuild/gendwarfksyms.rst
@@ -14,6 +14,29 @@ selected, **gendwarfksyms** is used instead to calculate symbol versions
from the DWARF debugging information, which contains the necessary
details about the final module ABI.

+Dependencies
+-----
+
+libelf, libdw and zlib are dependencies of gendwarfksyms.
+
+Here are a few examples for installing these dependencies:
+
+* Arch Linux and derivatives::
+
+ sudo pacman --needed -S zlib libelf
+
+* Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives::
+
+ sudo apt install libelf-dev libdw-dev zlib1g-dev
+
+* Fedora and derivatives::
+
+ sudo dnf install elfutils-libelf-devel elfutils-devel zlib-devel
+
+* openSUSE and derivatives::
+
+ sudo zypper install libelf-devel libdw-devel zlib-devel
+
Usage
-----


---
base-commit: f0b9d8eb98dfee8d00419aa07543bdc2c1a44fb1
change-id: 20260105-documents_gendwarfksyms-9f88e4a7ad2f

Best regards,
--
Jihan LIN <linjh22s@xxxxxxxxx>