KAFKA-1274 gradle.properties needs the variables used in the build.gradle patch by Joe Stein; Reviewed by Jun Rao

Liars in PrimitiveApiTest that promise to test api in compression mode, but don't do this actually; patched by Kostya Golikov; reviewed by Guozhang Wang and Jun Rao

KAFKA-1245 the jar files and pom are not being signed so nexus is failing to publish them patch by Joe Stein; Reviewed by Jun Rao

KAFKA-1263 Snazzy up the README markdown for better visibility on github; patched by Joe Stein; reviewed by Neha Narkhede

KAFKA-1188 Stale LeaderAndIsr request could be handled by the broker on Controller failover; reviewed by Neha, Jun

kafka-1244,kafka-1246,kafka-1249; various gradle issues for release; patched by Jun Rao; reviewed by Neha Narkhede

KAFKA-1259 Close blocked only until all messages had been sent not until all acknowledgements had been received.

KAFKA-1236 Fix various breakages in the perf tests. Make the producer test use either the old or the new producer.

KAFKA-1238 Move metadata req/resp parsing into its own classes and avoid updating cluster metadata if there are no available nodes.

KAFKA-1158 run rat is not needed this is documented now in the release not part of the server running

trivial fix to add missing license header using .gradlew licenseFormatMain and ./gradlew licenseFormatTest; patched by Jun Rao

kafka-1171; Gradle build for Kafka; patched by David Arthur, Joe Stein, Chris Freeman and Jun Rao; reviewed by Guozhang Wang, Joel Koshy and Neha Narkhede

kafka-1232; make TopicCommand more consistent; patched by Jun Rao; reviewed by Guozhang Wang and Neha Narkhede

KAFKA-1184 High-Level Consumer: expose fetcher threads number as a parameter; reviewed by Neha Narkhede

KAFKA-1055 BrokerTopicStats should distinguish between messages received and messages actually appended (i.e., not dropped for various reasons).

kafka-1214; Support arguments to zookeeper-shell.sh script; patched by Philp K. Warren; reviewed by Jun Rao

kafka-1208; Update system test still to use kafka-topics instead of kafka-create-topics shell; patched by Guozhang Wang; reviewed by Jun Rao

kafka-1202; optimize ZK access in KafkaController; also incorporating fixes in kafka-1020; patched by Jun Rao and Guozhang Wang; reviewed by Neha Narkhede and Joel Koshy