diff --git a/dev/flags/Makefile b/dev/flags/Makefile
deleted file mode 100644
index 9171eaf4c..000000000
--- a/dev/flags/Makefile
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,14 +0,0 @@
-INCLUDE  = -I../../include
-
-CC       = gcc
-OPTIMIZE = -O2
-DEFINE   =
-OBJS     = flags
-
-all: $(OBJS)
-
-flags: flags.c
-	$(CC) $(OPTIMIZE) $(DEFINE) $(INCLUDE) -o $@ $^
-
-clean:
-	rm -f $(OBJS) *.[oas] *~
diff --git a/dev/flags/README b/dev/flags/README
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7693c74db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dev/flags/README
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+This needs to be built from the top makefile, for example :
+
+    make dev/flags/flags
+
+Then the executable is usable either one value at a time from the
+command line, either with values coming from stdin with "-" passed
+alone instead of the value.
+
+It is possible to restrict the decoding to certain fields only by
+specifying one of "ana", "chn", "conn", "cs", "si", "sierr", "strm",
+"task", or "txn" before the value.
+