diff --git a/README.markdown b/README.markdown
index 81535aa22b1c..49c7f21ba3b1 100644
--- a/README.markdown
+++ b/README.markdown
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ The Solaris Porting Layer (SPL) is a Linux kernel module which provides
 many of the Solaris kernel APIs.  This shim layer makes it possible to
 run Solaris kernel code in the Linux kernel with relatively minimal
 modification.  This can be particularly useful when you want to track
-upstream Solaris development closely and don’t want the overhead of
+upstream Solaris development closely and do not want the overhead of
 maintaining a large patch which converts Solaris primitives to Linux
 primitives.
 
@@ -11,6 +11,11 @@ To build packages for your distribution:
     $ ./configure
     $ make pkg
 
+If you are building directly from the git tree and not an officially
+released tarball you will need to generate the configure script.
+This can be done by executing the autogen.sh script after installing
+the GNU autotools for your distribution.
+
 To copy the kernel code inside your kernel source tree for builtin
 compilation: