Having the right sources and libraries is one of the big pains in compiling
the kernel.  Most sources of information on the subject assume that you're a
big time developer running slackware, and you have every source and library
ever written already installed.  I don' t think I've ever even seen a
checklist for what you need to install.

What if you had say a recent RedHat or Mandrake distro, and you had chosen
NONE of the "Development" RPMs or source files?  What would you need besides
the "C" compiler to make a customized kernel?  MUST you always recompile the
"modules" if you recompile the kernel?

It occurred to me that it would be great to have an RPM that did nothing but
check the required files and report a list of RPMs you needed to install for
a kernel compile.  (The compile process reports specific files and
libraries, not RPMs.)

That way you'd get out of the blasted "make - error - find missing
dependency - find RPM containing missing item - install RPM - make -
error..." loop.  The only times I tried to compile, that loop ate all the
time I had for the project, so I just run the available binaries.