It takes on a modern machine (in my case a laptop from last year) about 4-5 mins, full with modules. In comparison, some random java project I am working on, it takes maybe 7-8 mins.
And actually, if you ever compiled a kernel, which I highly doubt, the make system does not recompile everything, only your change. Besides that, modules you can compile individually.
i7 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. I haven't measured it, but whenever I kick off a kernel build it certainly takes long enough that I end up going off and checking email, etc. But you're right, I haven't built Linux kernels for desktops and Android devices and BlueGene systems, hacking in changes or just putting in debug prints to try and figure out what the fuck Linux is doing so I can write a hardware simulator. Oh wait, yeah, I fucking have.
The kernel I'm working on now, non-Linux, can build in about 5 seconds--and this kernel works on a pretty large segment of hardware, too.
It takes on a modern machine (in my case a laptop from last year) about 4-5 mins, full with modules. In comparison, some random java project I am working on, it takes maybe 7-8 mins.
And actually, if you ever compiled a kernel, which I highly doubt, the make system does not recompile everything, only your change. Besides that, modules you can compile individually.