with the attached testcase, during linking you get:
test2.o:(.data+0x0): multiple definition of `_ZN3BadIT_E2_yE'
test1.o:(.data+0x0): first defined here

this comes from a template class:
template <class T>
class Bad {
        static const int _y;
};

template <class T> const int Bad<T>::_y = 1023;

although this seems like a generic c++ problem, it was only observed on hppa-linux and not on other platforms.

this test was simplified from a failure reported in building the quantlib package against g++-4.1. With earlier g++ versions the package builds fine.