Scratch that......
the file "head.S" also had 3 copies of the content, just like the Makefiles.
And so did the following files:
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/Makefile
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/head.S
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/install.sh
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/misc.c
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/nios2_sio.c
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux.lds
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux.lds.S
arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux.scr
Might've been a bad patch? Or a patch applied 3 times or something?
Anyways, I've removed the duplicates, and things are working a whole lot better:
CHK usr/initramfs_list
CC arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/misc.o
OBJCOPY arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux.bin
GZIP arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux.bin.gz
LD arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/piggy.o
LD arch/nios2nommu/boot/compressed/vmlinux
OBJCOPY arch/nios2nommu/boot/zImage
Kernel: arch/nios2nommu/boot/zImage is ready
Thanks and sorry for the noise,
-- therrien