[R] Failure to compile on Itanium

[F. Tusell]

I am trying to compile R on an Itanium machine running Red Hat 7.2 and 
gcc version 2.96.
The build fails with the following symptoms:

g77  -fPIC  -g -O2 -c cmplx.f -o cmplx.lo
g77  -fPIC  -g -O2 -c cmplxblas.f -o cmplxblas.lo
gcc -shared -L/usr/local/lib  -o libRlapack.so dlapack0.lo dlapack1.lo
dlapack2.lo dlapack3.lo cmplx.lo  cmplxblas.lo  -L/usr/local/lib
-L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/ia64-redhat-linux/2.96
-L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/ia64-redhat-linux/2.96/../../.. -lg2c -lm
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
/usr/bin/ld: open.o: @gprel relocation against dynamic symbol f__buflen
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[4]: *** [libRlapack.so] Error 1
make[4]: Leaving directory `/home/etptupaf/R-1.9.0/src/modules/lapack'
make[3]: *** [R] Error 2
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/etptupaf/R-1.9.0/src/modules/lapack'
make[2]: *** [R] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/etptupaf/R-1.9.0/src/modules'
make[1]: *** [R] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/etptupaf/R-1.9.0/src'
make: *** [R] Error 1

I searched and found in

  _http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/devel/04a/0679.html_

an answer from BD Ripley to a query with exactly the same problem, 
suggesting that a newer
version of gcc be used.

This solution is out of reach for me, as the system managers are not 
willing to undertake
any changes. They suggest instead that I use the "recommended" compilers,
ecc and ecf. I have tried to do so with no success so far: the  
configure script fails to find
convenient values for the different flags to be set. I have set some 
manually (in config.site),
to no avail so far. Has anyone compiled R with ecc and ecf? Or with 
gcc-2.96? I would be
grateful if he/she could share his/her config.site settings. Best, ft.

-- 
Fernando TUSELL                                e-mail:
Departamento de Econometría y Estadística           etptupaf at bs.ehu.es 
Facultad de CC.EE. y Empresariales             Tel:   (+34)94.601.3733
Avenida Lendakari Aguirre, 83                  Fax:   (+34)94.601.3754
E-48015 BILBAO  (Spain)                        Secr:  (+34)94.601.3740