To build host programs, you need to add the program names to 'hostprogs' to use the necessary build rule, but it is not enough to build them because there is no dependency. There are two types of host programs: built as the prerequisite of another (e.g. gen_crc32table in lib/Makefile), or always built when Kbuild visits the Makefile (e.g. genksyms in scripts/genksyms/Makefile). The latter is typical in Makefiles under scripts/, which contains host programs globally used during the kernel build. To build them, you need to add them to both 'hostprogs' and 'always-y'. This commit adds hostprogs-always-y as a shorthand. The same applies to user programs. net/bpfilter/Makefile builds bpfilter_umh on demand, hence always-y is unneeded. In contrast, programs under samples/ are added to both 'userprogs' and 'always-y' so they are always built when Kbuild visits the Makefiles. userprogs-always-y works as a shorthand. Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org> Acked-by: Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@gmail.com>