Comment # 3 on bug 919819 from Richard Biener

Confirmed.  The issue is combining -pie -fPIE and -static.  On x86_64 you
instead get

> gcc -o ct  -fPIE -pie -static t.c
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.8/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld:
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.8/crtbeginT.o: relocation R_X86_64_32
against `__TMC_END__' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile
with -fPIC
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/4.8/crtbeginT.o: error adding symbols: Bad
value
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

that's because there isn't a PIE static crtbegin.o.  On i?86 you are just
lucky.  Combining PIE and -static is simply not supported.

New linker from Factory seems to handle this fine (in some sense - it produces
a shared object with no dependencies).

What is the configure test testing?