FWIW:

Building on i386 tends to be less painful than on non-i386.  I've
had rough times on my AMD64, ranging from configure scripts panicking
when they encounter a CPU that they weren't explicitly programmed to
handle to programs that compile and install but do nothing but dump
core (probably buried assumptions that {sizeof (int) == sizeof (void *)}).


However, monster packages like GNOME and KDE are always a bit of a shakey
proposition, I found.  I once upon a time updated pkgsrc on a regular
basis for amusement.  I also kept KDE and GNOME around to see how they
were coming along.  I was quickly broke of that idea, due to the
"make update" cascade of dependancies---which often wound up with some
obscure package failing to build, derailing the entire update process
*after* everything had been deleted.

That was even on the i386.  I have never yet successfully built KDE or
GNOME on the AMD64 (though I admittedly have not tried very hard).
I figured that most of my problems were because the AMD64 was a very
new CPU and would be ironed out over time.  (Though with some commercial
GNU/LINUX systems supporting things like KDE on the AMD64, I confess to
a bit of surprise that it still won't compile for NetBSD/amd64.)

I think that it's somewhat the nature of the beast.  Though the
quarterly freezes should help a lot.


I don't imagine that this helps solve your problem, but it might be some
perspective.

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/