configure not work

[Peter Samuelson]

[Feiqi(Frank) Zhu <frankzhu at austin.ibm.com>]
> checking whether the C compiler (gcc -O ) works... no
> configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler 
> cannot create executables.
> 
> But I do have gcc in the $PATH
> # type gcc
> gcc is /usr/contrib/bin/gcc
> # gcc -v
> Reading specs from 
> /usr/contrib/depot/gcc2_8_1.913912630/rs_aix41/lib/gcc-lib/rs6000-ibm
> -aix4.1.4.0/2.8.1/specs
> gcc version 2.8.1

As Urban says, the error is that gcc doesn't seem to be working
properly.  Check to see if you can compile and run a simple C program.
Common problems are the lack of system header files and/or auxilliary
utilities like `as' (the assembler) and `ld' (the linker/binder).  IRIX 
pre-6.2 or so actually didn't come standard with any of these things!

Another thing to check, and this probably *isn't* your problem, is to
re-run the gcc fixincludes script.  gcc mangles your system header
files to fix common errors with ANSI-compliance, C++-safeness, etc, and
stores a local copy of anything it had to fix.  That means that gcc
compiled for 4.1.4 will have some outdated headers compared to 4.3.3,
and these could conceivably cause problems in some applications.

A third thing would be to try upgrading gcc.  2.8.1 is positively
*ancient*, and had a reputation for being rather buggy.  I've been
running gcc 2.95.x on AIX for quite some time with no major problems.

Peter