Hi Mike,
I would like to share some ideas with you. I have been in embedded systems development for almost 25 years now, and have used Linux since version 0.8! I think your development make system is really great, but, nevertheless, I would like a chinwag. I am an old fart - most of my first embedded systems were on 8-bit processors!
I believe that the way you have put your entire build-tree environment together is great - it took me less than 3 hours to get my ARM kernel booting on my target platform (which is an ARM not supported in your tree at all - I am using the Atmel AT91RM9200 chip!)
If this is OK with you, please let me have your landline number - you can send this to me via email on hamish@prodigi.ch, or else, if you are a skype user, you can contact me on my skype name, which is hamishguthrie
I think that your dev environment has HUGE potential in embedded space!
Regards