In message <199907050707.AAA02393@rockhead.com>, you write: 

-> all ===> lib/libarch
-> building shared i386 library (version 0.2)
-> ld -x -shared  -o /usr/src/lib/libarch/i386/libi386.so.0.2    --whole-archiv
-> e libi386_pic.a --no-whole-archive   
-> ld: libi386_pic.a: No such file or directory
-> *** Error code 1

I had lots of similar problems while upgrading (via source) from a.out to
ELF.  It seemed that often times things were looking in /emul/aout when they
should have been looking in /.

Recompiling the build tools (make, mkdep, egcs, ld, binutils, gas) as well
as my shell seemed to fix things.  The other problem I had is I was using 
a dynamically linked a.out tcsh, which seemed to exacerbate the problem.

When I changed root's shell to /bin/sh things got better, but they only
really improved when I reinstalled the native ELF toolchain and ELF /bin,
/sbin components (I was also getting funny errors from ln, mv, ... while
building when those were still a.out).

I'm not sure that is your problem, but I found I had to 'make build' a few
times before things were all sane, installing bits as I went.

HTH,
--rafal

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Rafal Boni                                                  rafal@mediaone.net