kernel compilation question

[Daniel Lange]

I was perusing the makefiles, and I've pretty much come to the conclusion
that the main kernel is compiled with gcc, and linked with standard ld,
and only the bootloader code is compiled using the bin86 (as86,
ld86) tools. Am I right in interpreting this to mean that the main kernel
is/can be 32-bit binary, and not strictly 16-bit?

Strictly for the sake of doing it, I'm considering recompiling the kernel
using an alternate compiler, and if the kernel main is actually 16-bit, I
need to know that information for setting up the other compiler.

Thanks for the info.

Dan Lange