strange indeed. I just tried another machine and I get this error:
checking for i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc...
/home/dav/gcc-4_4-branch/obj-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/./gcc/xgcc
-B/home/dav/gcc-4_4-branch/obj-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/./gcc/
-B/local/gcc-4_4-branch/install/i686-pc-linux-gnu/bin/
-B/local/gcc-4_4-branch/install/i686-pc-linux-gnu/lib/ -isystem
/local/gcc-4_4-branch/install/i686-pc-linux-gnu/include -isystem
/local/gcc-4_4-branch/install/i686-pc-linux-gnu/sys-include
checking for suffix of object files... configure: error: in
`/home/dav/gcc-4_4-branch/obj-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/i686-pc-linux-gnu/libgcc':
configure: error: cannot compute suffix of object files: cannot compile
I am also quite confused about this one...