PUBLISHED_FROM=cf49d0d345e4a7607c535f9578b8ed4160f2fccd

Note: this is only the first step; the C sources won't be built until
the second step is done.

The actual build takes about 1.3s on cloud2 which still runs the docker
containers and image layers on the very slow spinning disk. cloud3 has
docker mounted on the SSD disk; measured speedups of 20-30%

PUBLISHED_FROM=c5acef1d64ebc8dca8ed31f51685c8b3090c5767

Remove the random() stubs from the codebase

PUBLISHED_FROM=0f56ec7dffa0af1f5061a17d8801239d6f0e32a5

Use the same config mechanism for ro_vars as for sys_config, get rid of a bunch of custom code.

PUBLISHED_FROM=d2be76cb97090669dd6a21e95d0ba821eaa1a313