以下摘自LKD:
After the kernel configuration is set—however you do it—you can build it with a single command:
$ make
Unlike kernels before 2.6, you no longer need to run make dep before building the kernel—the dependency tree is maintained automatically.You also do not need to specify a specific build type, such as bzImage, or build modules separately, as you did in old versions.The default Makefile rule will handle everything.
也就是在2.6版本以后的Linux kernel中，执行make或make all命令即包含了make modules。也可参加这个帖子。