You can disregard this thread... the problem was pilot error.
I understand now why the "compile" wrapper was getting used.
The probe "checking whether $CC and cc understand -c and -o together... "
is run WITHOUT $CFLAGS.
In my case CFLAGS included an argument required to locate the compiler's
One note regarding my report below:
I have noticed that autoconf has chosen to use "$srcdir/config/compile xlc"
instead of just "xlc" (I set CC=xlc). I strongly suspect this is related,
and am investigating why the compile wrapper is used. However, independent
of that there does seem to be some
