So much clearer and easier.
Thanks glebfm@ for the idea.

This allows you to reset the BRANCH variable by specifying the
'BRANCH=' argument on the command line.

The BRANCH parameter indicates that the target is a starterkit and
not a regular build for Sisyphus.

Status updates and readability tweaks all over the place.

This one regulates the build wrapper: if the value is non-empty
then nice(1) and ionice(1) will be attempted so that the build
behaves better in regard to other tasks running on the system.

A few doc/variables.txt updates along the way.

Implemented opportunistic alarm support as proposed by torabora;
the actual result depends on readline and/or terminal settings
(read up on "visual bell" vs "audible bell" in case it's wrong).

TODO: this ought to be shifted downstream when proper logging
framework is there.

install2 cleanups:

- functionally indifferent ones: particularly, install2/*/98system's
  "mkdir -p /image" was superfluous as it was done by that time already
  by sub.in/stage2/image-scripts.d/00stage1

- taken apart, prepared for tags: so far it's a mostly moot change
  since the installer cleanup scripts themselves are mostly the same as
  preceding 90cleanup was (with some additions corresponding to recent
  kernel development); it's still unclear what the mechanism for
  configuring the cleanups in effect will be, either directory/package
  regex lists or tagged scripts excluded from execution by yet another tag

fixes:

- image.in/Makefile: fix metadata related test; the actual test was
  assuming that stage1 kernel means installer, which is not the case
  since generic stage2 introduction; oh well

- 85cleanup-lowmem: a "_" too much was the culprit in destroying the
  needed translations along with those deemed superfluous; thanks go to
  Oleg Ivanov and Lenar Shakirov for finding the bug and proposing the
  fix altogether

additions:

- features.in/Makefile: reworked help target; it was rather inaccessible
  due to BUILDDIR normally undefined at the time of direct make
  invocation, and BUILDDIR is normally defined during normal builds
  anyways so let's try it this way.

- README++

daydreams:

- 01-genbasedir: we should drop bzip2 compressed pkglists some day
  but see genbasedir and apt-cdrom first, 90-pkg.sh (alterator-pkg)
  will fail miserably otherwise

make CLEAN=1 will prune workdirs after packing their results,
so disk (or preferably tmpfs) usage will be lower

...including hasher note, thx m-p-d.

Renamed server-light.iso into server-ovz.iso to avoid brand dilution
and confusion (rider@'s server-light rather favours kvm, anyways).

Introduced KDEFAULT: a reliable default kernel chooser knob
since apt's regex ordering proved pretty unreliable.
Spelling things explicitly is better anyways.

SYSLINUX related features undergone pretty major rewrite
(that includes syslinux, hdt and memtest).

The problem to tackle was features.in/syslinux/generate.mk
assuming syslinux and pciids available in build *host* system;
this well might not be the case (or worse yet, those can be
just different).  So now we're a bit less elegant and a bit
more enterprise, stuffing things into chroot and working there.

Bunch of other fixes along the road, including ; to name a few:
- fixed memtest entry (overlooked while renaming SYSLINUX_ITEMS)
- new and shiny doc/CodingStyle
- gfxboot, stage1 target chain, hdt tweaks
- distro.mk rehashed
- README++
- TODO: dropped (integer overflow anyways)
  + actually moved off-tree to reduce commit spam
- s,\.config\.mk,distcfg.mk,g
- doc/profiles.mk.sample: sample ~/.mkimage/profiles.mk
- ...and assorted fixups/additions

Sorry for convoluted commit, this would have been pretty hard to
rework into some really readable shape (and you might be interested
in the original repo's history horrors then, anyways).