add some more comments and clean it up a little more.

packaging/SGI/mkrelease.sh

@@ -1,13 +1,25 @@
 #!/bin/sh
 
 # This file goes through all the necessary steps to build a release package.
-# You may specify a OS major version number (4, 5, or 6) to specify which
-# OS release to build. If no version number is given it will default to 6.
+# syntax:
+#     mkrelease.sh [5] [clean] [targets ....]
+#
+# You may specify 5 to build for IRIX 5.3
+#
+# You can specify clean to do a make clean before building. Make clean
+# will also run configure and generate the required Makefile.
+#
+# You can specify which targets to build. If targets are specified, the
+# specified targets will be built but inst packages will not be generated.
 
 doclean=""
 SGI_ABI=-n32
 CC=cc
 
+if [ ! -f ../../source/Makefile ]; then
+  doclean="clean"
+fi
+
 if [ "$1" = "clean" ]; then
   doclean=$1
   shift
@@ -50,7 +62,7 @@ if [ "$doclean" = "clean" ]; then
 fi
 
 cd ../../source
-if [ "$doclean" = "clean" -o ! -f Makefile ]; then
+if [ "$doclean" = "clean" ]; then
   echo Create SGI specific Makefile
   chmod +x configure
   chmod +x configure.developer
@@ -79,6 +91,13 @@ fi
 
 cd ../packaging/SGI
 
+#
+# Don't generate packages if targets were specified
+#
+if [ "$1" != "" ]; then
+  exit 0;
+fi
+
 # generate the packages
 #
 echo Generating Inst Packages