initialize WHICH, AWK, PERL and MAKE a bit earlier

have this option independent code out of the way before starting option
processing.

Change-Id: I5a08caeb25689b155c256ef82505c000112f5039
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
remove hacks to support solaris 2.[56] and aix < 5

moving dead code out of the way of further refactoring.

Change-Id: If558406cdf13d61478634dd7eff644dc67b0e53d
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
don't automatically display help on error

it's entirely pointless to flood the user with information and force him
to scroll back when he most likely just made a typo.

apart from that, this reduces the data dependencies, thus easing further
refactoring.

Change-Id: I7b24274d453de54a4f02481a66d77e27d4ab0657
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
move some option validations to more relevant places

minimizing the amount of code executed before platform detection.

Change-Id: Ib2c0d97ce5040ced8c4c41d74f428fe7d0f75664
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
do CONFIG+=silent after configure tests

it's counterproductive to do it earlier: it's passed down to configure
tests, which then log less info than they could.

but primarily, this serves the purpose of minimizing the amount of code
executed before platform detection.

Change-Id: Iff19b8555de19d048ea6d9341af965871b314c54
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>
make help independent from options and environment

the help would echo the defaults adjusted by command line overrides and
environment variables for some options. this was entirely pointless.
it also printed the result of the os detection, which was mostly
useless.

but the primary reason for doing this is reducing data dependencies,
so the code can be moved up.

not touching the windows configure, as it's a lot harder and currently
that behavior isn't in the way of what i need to do.

Change-Id: Ide62119091c8494fb3bea2b607f140268f057919
Reviewed-by: Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@intel.com>