Compiling under MSYS

["Bidski" <bidski at bigpond dot net dot au>]

Hi all,

Im trying to make a Win32-Win64 cross compiler so i can build a Win64 native 
compiler under MSYS/MinGW (following these guides for the cross-compiler and 
the Win64 native compiler).

However the build is failing on BinUtils (version 2.20.1) and I cant figure 
out why. I have googled the problems that I get but cant find a definitive 
answer on how to fix it and the problem is not consistent. Generally, if I 
run make again after I get an error, the error will disappear and I will get 
a different one.

If it fails on a specific command, I can replicate it by hand and it will 
succeed without error. (e.g. if it fails trying to compile a simple a 
program, I can copy the source into a separate file and compile with the 
same commands and it will succeed).

So far, the only problem that seems to be persistent (although it changes 
slightly every time) is as follows (taken from make output).

checking size of long long... 8
checking size of void *... 4
checking size of long... 0

**** truncated ****

checking what to include in bfd_stdint.h... stddef.h (using manual 
detection)
checking size of void *... (cached) 4
checking size of long... (cached) 0
checking size of int... 0
checking size of short... 0
checking size of char... 1
checking for type equivalent to int8_t... char
checking for type equivalent to int16_t... /mingw64/binutils/bfd/configure: 
line 261: return: please: numeric argument required
configure: error: no 16-bit type

the output seen here changed nearly all the time, with size of the types 
varying (used to fail trying to find a int8_t type, but has progressed 
passed this point also). I haven't changed any settings between each 
configure/make. I am running configure from a sub-directory (binutils/build) 
with the following command

   ../configure --target=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --disable-multilib --prefix=/mingw64 
--with-sysroot=/mingw64

I do not believe that the MSYS/MinGW toolchain that I am using to build 
binutils is broken as I can and have built programs/libraries using it 
(wxWidgets, Xerces-C, Boost as well as my own programs).

My current toolchain was built from pre-compiled binaries following this 
guide.

Some system info
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 245 (AMD64)
All versions for MSYS/MinGW and related software is listed in this guide.

If you need any more information please let me know.

Can anyone tell me what is going on? Or at least point me in the right 
direction?

Regards
Bidski