can not build sh-hitachi on i586-pc-linux-gnu

[Soubhik Bhattacharya <soubhik at cse dot iitk dot ac dot in>]

hi!!
i'm feeling a bit embarrassed to tell you that i'm using the source of
gcc-2.8.1. but i have to live with this version-(:......

while building for the target sh-hitachi on i586-pc-linux-gnu, i'm getting 
the following error message:

gcc -DCROSS_COMPILE -DIN_GCC    -g  -DHAVE_CONFIG_H  -o genattrtab \
genattrtab.o rtl.o print-rtl.o rtlanal.o ` case "obstack.o" in ?*) echo
obstack.o ;; esac ` ` case "gcc"@"" in "cc"@?*) echo  ;; esac ` ` case
"" in ?*) echo  ;; esac ` rtlanal.o: In function
`dead_or_set_regno_p': /home/soubhik/downloads/gcc-src/gcc-2.8.1-tmp/rtlanal.c:1162: undefined
reference to `optimize' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status  

how to get around the problem? my intention is to test sh.md. so if there
is any other sh-based target that can be built smoothly on
i586-pc-linux-gnu then that'll also serve my purpose. i've gone thru
config.guess, but it seems it's of no help.....

my system configuration is as follows: 

[soubhik@cseproj22 gcc-2.8.1-tmp]$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.2.15-4mdk (chmou@kenobi.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version
2.95.3 19991030 (prerelease)) #1 Wed May 10 15:31:30 CEST 2000     

thank you in advance for your help.....
Regards,
soubhik.