Jim, Igmar and me said same thing.
The essence: CC has to be 64 bit C compiler HOSTCC has to be 32 bit C compiler (Igmar has 64 bit gcc, I have 32 bit gcc, so we said the same.) Check whether the above things is true on your computer. Other suggestion: The 'make menuconfig' uses the ncurses5 library. Check which version is installed on your Sparc: - libncurses5, libncurses5-dev or - lib64ncurses5(?), lib64ncurses5-dev (as Igmar wrote) Just try the 'make config' command. If it will be start, the problem is in ncurses. The 'make menuconfig' uses the HOSTCC compiler. If you have libncurses5-dev the HOSTCC, which contains 32 bit compiler should be work. However, if you have lib64ncurses5-dev, try to change HOSTCC to 64 bit compiler. (I don't know whether it is work, because the HOSTCC is used in another compiling threads also.) Regards, Jana