Some environments don't support symbolic links :-(
If ln -s is not supported, configure can figure it out, and as a last resort uses: LN_S = cp -p I've found two problems with this. The first problem is that LN_S is not propagated past the top-level Makefile. This can manifest as strange GCC_NO_EXECUTABLES messages: Link tests are not allowed after GCC_NO_EXECUTABLES The patch (against an older gcc 4.2.4) addresses this first problem. The second is that: cp -p $1 $2 mimics ln -s $1 $2 only if $1 is an absolute path, or $2 does not contain any path separators. This is not always true. For example: gcc/gcc/config/t-slibgcc-elf-ver: $(LN_S) $(SHLIB_SONAME) $(SHLIB_DIR)/$(SHLIB_SOLINK) There doesn't seem to be any straightforward way around this except diligence: cd $(SHLIB_DIR) && $(LN_S) $(SHLIB_SONAME) $(SHLIB_SOLINK) Earl --- gcc/gcc/Makefile.in.orig 2012-02-01 11:27:52.783587886 -0800 +++ gcc/gcc/Makefile.in 2012-02-01 11:56:37.973586113 -0800 @@ -1465,6 +1465,7 @@ MULTILIB_OSDIRNAMES='$(MULTILIB_OSDIRNAMES)' \ ASM_HIDDEN_OP='$(ASM_HIDDEN_OP)' \ GCC_FOR_TARGET='$(GCC_FOR_TARGET)' \ + LN_S='$(LN_S)' \ mkinstalldirs='$(mkinstalldirs)' \ $(SHELL) mklibgcc > tmp-libgcc.mk mv tmp-libgcc.mk libgcc.mk --- gcc/Makefile.in.orig 2012-02-01 15:08:00.353579677 -0800 +++ gcc/Makefile.in 2012-02-01 15:09:38.196088006 -0800 @@ -486,7 +486,8 @@ "`echo 'LANGUAGES=$(LANGUAGES)' | sed -e s'/[^=][^=]*=$$/XFOO=/'`" \ "LEAN=$(LEAN)" \ "CONFIG_SHELL=$(SHELL)" \ - "MAKEINFO=$(MAKEINFO) $(MAKEINFOFLAGS)" + "MAKEINFO=$(MAKEINFO) $(MAKEINFOFLAGS)" \ + "LN_S=$(LN_S)" # We leave this in just in case, but it is not needed anymore. RECURSE_FLAGS_TO_PASS = $(BASE_FLAGS_TO_PASS)