Stephen> Maybe we managed to give you an old, broken configure.  Do you
    Stephen> have autoconf available?  If so could you try running autoconf,
    Stephen> and rerunning the configure command?

    Stephen> What shell are you using?

    Stephen> Did this configure script come from CVS or tarballs?

That confused me me because it also worked fine out of the box on my Mac.
Rerunning autoconf ( 2.59) didn't help.  I'm using bash 3.00.16(1)-release on
Solaris, 2.05b.0(1)-release on my Mac.

Okay, I tracked it down to what I think is a misuse of GNU sed features in
the configure script.  On my Mac:

    % with_error_checking=none
    % echo $with_error_checking | sed -e 's/^[a-z]*\(,\(.*\)\)\{0,1\}$/\2/'

On the Solaris system at work:

    % with_error_checking=none
    % echo $with_error_checking | sed -e 's/^[a-z]*\(,\(.*\)\)\{0,1\}$/\2/'
    none

Maybe configure (or autoconf) is expecting too much from Sun's sed.  I don't
believe older versions of sed understand the {0,1} construct do they?  I
think that's a GNU sed invention.  If I replace that sed command with gsed
(our local install of GNU sed), it works.